


No One Left But Me

by quicksparrows



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Complete, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2020-10-29 18:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 44
Words: 294,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Five years after the revolution that made him both a hero and a failure, Sylvain Jose Gautier is living a quiet rural life, having given up his titles, sold his lands, and left his friends behind. Though he has tried to put his past behind him, it comes back to haunt him when Edelgard asks him to undertake one last mission for her, forcing him to reconnect with old friends and confront the man he was, the man he is, and the man he wishes to be.(A post-Crimson Flower story wherein Sylvain, Felix and Ingrid were recruited to the Eagles and tried to save Dimitri from himself by fighting on both sides of the war. Spoilers for Crimson Flower, with many borrowed elements of Azure Moon. Updates every Friday.)





	1. Horse Shit

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> I enjoyed this game so much that I immediately knew I was going to write something long for it, and then I went on a transpacific cruise for two weeks where I had no internet, so I just started writing and didn't stop. I wrote this armed with a map of Fódlan, a nonfiction book about political social circles in 12thc rural France, about 5 pages of notes, and a deep desire to really dive into Sylvain's character. What was originally going to be a one-shot story about Sylvain being recruited to the Black Eagles turned into a much longer project. It ended up being a story about trauma, guilt, vices, healing and identity; I really wanted to explore crossing house lines and this idea that Sylvain, Felix and Ingrid struggled to bridge a gap between the revolution and their best friend Dimitri, and how it lingers with them in peacetime. It is, at its very core, a character study for Sylvain.
> 
> At the time of posting the first chapter, I have written 19 chapters -- about 100,000 words -- that make up Part 1 of this story. As it's pretty much ready to go, I will be posting a chapter every Friday for the next eighteen weeks while I write Part 2 (alongside other fic projects I have on the go!) I hadn't played Golden Deer when I wrote part 1, so you have my sincerest apologies that you won't see much of them.
> 
> There are spoilers for Crimson Flower, with many borrowed elements of Azure Moon. There will be sexual elements, alcohol use, explorations of abuse, and sometimes violence. Sylvain/Felix as a pairing is on the slow-burn side. There are lots of flashbacks. Part 1 is a lot of exploration and character study; Part 2 will be healing and growth. There are a bunch of other pairings here, but they aren't really a focus and you'll get to know them as Sylvain reconnects with old friends. 
> 
> Many thanks to my beta readers and editors, [Emmy](https://twitter.com/chickenbabby) and [Tam](https://twitter.com/weirdtakoyaki).
> 
> You can also find me on Twitter here: [@Sparrowemblem](https://twitter.com/sparrowemblem).

The man who called himself Joseph rose from bed just before sun-up. In earlier years, he might have considered that unreasonable, particularly after a long night drinking, carousing and generally making the best of his life, but every man had to grow up eventually. Dawn it was. He washed his face, raked his red hair out of his eyes, dressed for the day and set out.

With the sun barely bleeding through the tops of the trees, the last of night's chill still weighed heavy on the grass. He wrapped his cloak around him a little tighter to push back the cold. It was a short walk to the stables, where he would ready the horses.

Joseph was good with horses. He always had been. After all, he had been raised to ride them, and had gotten his first pony at age four. Two outgrown ponies later he had his first horse, a big white one named Timber. That horse wasn't quite as hardy as the ponies, as they were better fitted to Faerghus's steep inclines and bitter winters, but the horse could be ridden in battle. From that time on he'd trained in combat maneuvers from horseback. He'd scarcely set foot in a stable back then. In those days, he'd rolled out of bed as late as he could get away with, and by time he'd made his way through breakfast and down to the courtyard, a squire would have already saddled up Timber and he'd be set to go.

Those days had happened a long time ago.

Now Joseph rose each morning and shovelled horse shit out of twelve stalls, some not even occupied, and some thoroughly wet and rank because he'd neglected to do it the day before. Those stables had to be kept pretty clean, but sometimes he just didn't get to it. It didn't matter to him much, as the occupants belonged to his employer's guests and would seldom be there longer than a day or two. The only horse that lived there year-round was an old one, a mare that Joseph had never gotten the name of. He just called that mare Horse. It fit, even if it was uncreative, and it made him laugh to call it down the stable aisle.

"Joseph?"

Joseph lanced his pitchfork into the hay, almost hard enough to make it stand straight up. It didn't quite, forcing him to catch it anyway and lean it up against one of the stall doors. He made his way down to the other end of the stable, but upon reaching the threshold, a young woman stepped into his space, beaming.

"There you are," she said. "I called you so many times, you never answer…"

"Keep your voice down," he admonished her. "People in the house are still sleeping, and the later they sleep, the slower I can work."

"I know, I know," she said. She'd just come from the house, after all; her chemise was barely tied, revealing the satin-bound edge of her bodice underneath, and her feet had been slipped into her boots without any stockings. She pouted up at him: "You didn't want to sneak away with me this morning?"

"Bit nippy, don't you think?" he asked.

"Oh, hum, you're always saying the cold doesn't bother you," she retorted, before she took him by the front of his shirt and leaned up to kiss him. Joseph barely avoided her, but he put his arms around her waist anyway, holding her to him.

"Aww, come on, Charmaine," he complained. "I have six more stalls to clean, otherwise I'm going to get an earful…"

Charmaine pouted up at him still, her reddened lower lip pushed out far more than necessary. She held it well, with just the slightest plead to her eyes, the kind that had most men weak at the knees. It took Joseph less than ten seconds to flop, sighing good-naturedly as if such a thing could really be so tedious. Truthfully, it came to him about as well as horsemanship did: Joseph had never turned down an opportunity to tumble a pretty girl. He let his hands drift down her backside to give her a good squeeze. Holding her tight, mashing her pretty breasts up against his chest, he murmured in her ear:

"Alright, alright, maybe just a quick one…"

And then he directed her firmly towards the cleanest stall, Charmaine giggling all the while.

And while Joseph was busy warming up his morning, six stalls went uncleaned, and the house slowly started to wake up. People rose from the beds they'd fallen asleep in and begun the quiet process of picking themselves up, extracting themselves from the arms of last night's lovers and searching for their discarded clothing. The clothing wouldn't be where they left it, of course –– their fineries tended to end up on the floor or draped over chairs, and that was hardly a way to keep a rich man's clothes. They would discover that during the night, some maid had snuck in and chastely averted her eyes from the naked bodies peeking out from under the sheets and folded up the clothes, leaving them arranged neatly on the dressing stand. Even so, they would dress without a word, the only sound being the jingling of belt buckles and the sound of capes rustling as they were drawn around shoulders. Leather belting would be buckled, and boots would be pulled on. Their lovers would scarcely stir, used to being abandoned at daybreak. They likely preferred it that way, anyway.

(And frankly, who could blame them? A lover seen by the light of day seldom looked as palatable as the one from the night before, especially considering the wine flowing liberally through the house.)

By the time Joseph finished up his duties, a hand over a too-eager mouth when she threatened to moan loud enough for the whole damn house to hear, those same people were preparing to leave. It was the same every day, particularly so on the week-ends. Joseph rose from the hay with a grin on his face from the heady rush of being alive enough to have orgasms, and then set about saddling the horses, one by one. By time he finished the first row, careful to match the appropriate tack to each horse, the first guest was preparing to leave. Joseph took his horse out to the stable door.

"Go on, take him out to the dirty bastard," Joseph said, voice low, passing the reins to Charmaine, who was scarcely better dressed than she started. She shot him a warning look, as they were never supposed to talk about clients like that, but she smiled because it was true. Joseph gave the horse a firm pat on the buttocks, sending it trotting aside Charmaine across the lawn.

Leaning against the great carriage doors of the stable, Joseph watched the aforementioned dirty bastard take the horse from Charmaine, and then linger to share a few words with her. He watched Charmaine giggle at something said and, when offered, put her hand out to accept a couple coins. When the man mounted and rode off down the lane, she watched him go, waiting until he reached the gate to turn and rush back to Joseph. She fit herself to his side.

"You'd think they'd tip better," Charmaine said, sighing, placing a few of the coins in Joseph's waiting hand. "Considering what they pay, too."

"They figure they already paid," Joseph replied, tucking the coins into the lip of his boot. "Besides, they're all cheap."

"But it's not cheap at all," she said. "Riding all the way out here just to get laid? Hard to believe this place has anything you couldn't get in Enbarr."

Joseph scoffed.

"Let me tell you a thing about the nobility, Charmaine," he said. "They want to cling to every last bit of power they still have, and that means staying in everyone's good books. They don't want to be seen cavorting with prostitutes in Enbarr; they'd be stoned in the streets these days. They come out here –– and pay good money for it –– because they aren't seen."

"But you just said they're cheap," she said. 

"They're cheap because they don't think poor people deserve their money," Joseph clarified. "They're happy to spend it to get whatever they want, or even to show off that they had it in the first place. But they don't want more than a coin or two of it to end up in your pockets, or mine, because we'll just misuse it."

Charmaine nodded, and for a moment she looked out at the front lane. Soon, more horses would be leaving as their riders made their shameful trips home, no doubt preparing whatever lie they needed to for their wives along the way. Joseph thought that Charmaine should know better than to think so optimistically about the clients they serve.

"You're how old, Char?" he asked.

"Eighteen," she replied.

"Oh, so you were a kid when the revolution happened," he said. "That explains a lot. You said you grew up on a farm, right? I bet you never even saw a noble before you came here, anyway."

Charmaine looked at him, puzzled.

"Only once," she said. "One came through the town nearest my family's farm, when I was there seeing the merchants. He rode a horse that was so well-groomed its coat shone white, and his big red coat was sewn with gold threads. I still remember the buttons glinting in the sun. Everyone was cross, because he was there to collect taxes."

"Sounds about right," Joseph said, "Did you see any of the war? The fighting?"

Charmaine nodded.

"A little bit," she said. "There was fighting barely an hour's ride from us, so we sheltered some other families for a bit when they lost their farms to torchings."

"And the nobleman you saw, the one collecting taxes, he must have been related to the family that ruled the duchy, right?" 

"I suppose so."

"Did he do anything at all when those farms were burned?"

"He raised an army of his own to protect the area," Charmaine said. "All of my older siblings were asked to join the army. Most of them didn't come back."

Joseph nodded, perhaps a little more soberly.

"And I bet that nobleman spent a lot of time and money securing his own house, and looking after his own kids, before he bought arms for his new army. What did he arm them with? Scuffle hoes? Hatchets?"

He realized there was no small amount of contempt dripping from his voice, but he could also see from Charmaine's expression that he was right on the money. It was never a good feeling, pointing out how one man's cheapness could ruin so many lives, but it was true nonetheless. 

Charmaine thought about that for a moment, worrying her rosy lower lip with her thumb, but before she could recall what happened, another guest stepped onto the house's porch, and Joseph stepped away to retrieve the right horse. Charmaine met him at the step again, but this time, as she took the reins, she looked up at him and asked: "Did you fight in the war, Joseph?" 

Joseph made a sound, something like discomfort, and he felt a mild relief sending her across the yard to the waiting client, as it gave him a moment to think about his answer. Generally, you could travel across Fódlan and count anyone between the ages of twenty-one and thirty as having served in some capacity in the war, and anyone older no doubt served in wars before that. The number would be even higher if you counted the headstones, too.

Somehow he'd never imagined being asked about something he'd assume was a given, but he supposed that's what he got for rolling eighteen-year-olds around in the hay.

When Charmaine returned, another coin for him and another coin for her in hand, she was ready for his answer. When he still didn't really have a story put together, she said: "You did, didn't you?"

"I did," he agreed. 

She frowned, as though she felt deep concern for him. In that moment, Joseph resented the feeling that he'd ruined something between them. He didn't want to be an ex-soldier; he preferred to be the charming and playful older guy she snuck off to the stables with when she really should be mopping floors inside. If he felt like being really hard on himself, he could also say he liked feeling like someone who could be looked up to, even just if it was for something so trite. There was a bit of dignity in that, the kind of dignity that scooping horse shit didn't afford him.

But the girl wanted an answer.

"I was a soldier," he said. Not untrue, but he also hadn't been a soldier for at least a decade; promotions within the army had always come easily to him. "A pretty good one, if I do say so myself. But I just don't like to talk about it."

"Was it really bad?" she asked.

He almost laughed, but it died on his throat just as fast. If he was being honest with himself, he had thought about it every day for years, but he hadn't let the words pass his lips for just as long. Several employers ago, at least. 

"Oh, kiddo," he said, a chuckle on his voice. "I think about the good times to get me through mucking out stalls and throwing drunk assholes out of the house for getting rough with the girls. But the bad times… well." 

Charmaine hesitated, as if put off by his uneasy laughter, his unwillingness to tell mingling with his desire to just spit it out, let it go, let it flow free. It did feel good, for an instant, and then Joseph felt the heavy need to pull it all back. He shouldn't talk about any of it.

He didn't need to. Right then, a voice called him from the house, and Charmaine ran to the nearest window to see who was poking their head out to shout at them. She rushed back to pummel Joseph in the arm: "The girls need you for something!" she admonished. "Go!"

"Yeesh! Lay off, I'm going," he said. He reached to ruffle Charmaine's hair,and when she raised her hands to defend herself, he swooped right in, lightning fast, to pinch her bottom instead. She let out a great cry — more amused than anything, of course — and shoved him on his way.

On his way back across the lawn to the house, Joseph felt the exhaustion of having another day ahead of him settling in. Maybe it would be a slow day, he hoped. If they didn't have too many clients, a lot of the girls would be unoccupied, and he could sneak into their quarters and drink with them and play some cards. They liked him well enough, and he liked them, too, as they were a pleasant bunch who were honest about their feelings. He got the impression it was because their work made them tired of putting on fronts for men, but that worked for him. Joseph had always liked honest women, even if honest women had never seemed to like him much.

And then he spied something — in the distance, coming up the lane, was a man on horseback. At first Joseph thought that it was the dirty bastard returning to collect a mislaid pocket-watch or something of that sort, but as the man drew closer on that great black horse, Joseph felt a modicum of fear pool in his belly. He thought, for a stupid, fleeting second, that letting any words about his war days, no matter how vague or meaningless, had cursed him and summoned a punishment.

Joseph pulled the hood of his cloak up and made his way around the house, casually as he could. With any luck, the man wouldn't realize he was ever there. The second he reached the corner of the house, he doubled his stride, rushing to the kitchen doors. He plunged through the kitchen, muttering greetings to the cook and her assistant before slipping into the back staircase. In his haste, he nearly tripped on the loose first step, but he caught himself against the bannister and hurried up, taking the steps two at a time. He exited through one of the girls’ lounges, vaguely registering that they were all in various states of undress, hearing “Jos!” called in pleasant, sometimes-teasing greeting, but he didn’t stop until he reached the overlook. A couple girls trailed behind him, chattering.

The overlook wasn’t much more than a glorified crack in the floorboards, usually concealed by a rug. The girls kept it so they could look into the receiving room below and scope out the clients — deciding who needed to be washed, and who just needed a comforting shoulder to cry on, and who would need to be talked to as though he were the most _magnificent_, no, the _greatest,_ no, the _biggest_ they’d ever laid eyes on. It was an unspoken rule that you were not to acknowledge its existence, for it was the kind of thing that would deter clients.

Another girl was already knelt there, peering down at the people below. Joseph gestured for her to move and she made space for the both of them to share, heads together and knees uncomfortable on the floorboards.

Down below, the man waited in the receiving room. Joseph found himself looking down the long nose of Hubert von Vestra, the Minister of the Imperial Household.

Surely, it was him. His hair was ruffled from the long ride, and he wore a heavier cloak than usual, but Joseph would know that nose anywhere. And while most people would make themselves comfortable in one of the many plush armchairs, Hubert stood so still and so stiffly that he could be a statue. He always did that, and it always felt unsettling — like a predator waiting for its prey to just _try_ to make a run for it. His only movement was to look around, carefully scanning the room from left to right, observing his surroundings while waiting for someone to fetch the brothel-keeper. From above it was hard to tell, but Joseph thought he might be smirking.

The girl reached to squeeze his hand.

“Look at his clothes. A high roller, this early in the morning?” she whispered. "He must have traveled all night."

Joseph couldn't reply to that. There wasn't anything to say, after all, but maybe his face betrayed him, for the girl paused and gave him a questioning look. _What's wrong?_ Joseph turned his attention back down just in time to see the brothel-keeper enter the room. That was Albert. He was an unobjectionable fellow, but unobjectionable was an extremely high compliment for the sort of man who operated a brothel of women for the kind of clientele that snuck around sumptuary laws. Joseph didn't like him, but he did pay on time, and he never objected when Joseph asked for more after doing a bit of extra work.

"Good sir! Welcome!" 

Joseph watched Albert cross the room to extend a hand to Hubert. Hubert merely looked down at it as if he had been offered something mildly unpleasant, his deep reserves of patience threatening to drown out any attempt at service.

"Rarely do we see a man here so early, but I suppose the Minister of the Imperial Household_ must_ be an early riser to oversee his domain! Marquis Hubert von Vestra," Albert said, proudly. His usual bluster was dampened when he was left to withdraw his hand; it became obvious that Hubert would make no effort at all to meet with him. He pocketed his hands and tried a compliment: "You must be a man of high stamina, to start this early! Our girls will keep you going all day."

“I am, but no thank you,” Hubert said, his voice a long, relaxed drawl. "I am here to see a man."

“Oh, ah,” Albert said. He looked disappointed, perhaps because it hurt to lose a chance to make a great deal of money, perhaps because Hubert seemed content to make it hurt. Albert smiled on anyway: “I’m afraid we only offer girls at our establishment, but perhaps we can interest you just the same, since you’ve come all this way. One of our girls, Kathleen, she’s—“

“I am married,” Hubert informed him, curtly.

“Of course, of course,” Albert agreed, his smile waning. “Perhaps you’d just like something to eat, or for your horse to be watered? We do not generally offer our services as an inn, but for a gentleman of your stature, we can spare a room––”

“I told you already that I am looking for a man,” Hubert replied. Albert fell silent once more, and now Joseph really knew that Hubert was smiling. “To be specific, I am looking for Sylvain Jose Gautier. He is perhaps a hair shorter than I, with red hair and a sanguine complexion. I suspect he has been here for at least a month, but it could be as many as two.”

Joseph frowned.

“We don’t have anyone here by that name,” Albert said, but he moved to his desk to take out a large book. The vellum pages detailed the clients’ names and accounts, but Joseph was sure that the name Sylvain Jose Gautier would not be among them. "Unless...?" He flipped through the pages.

Hubert humoured this show of good book-keeping for scarcely a moment before saying: “Then who was it I saw, darting across the lawn when I came in?”

And then Hubert looked up, right through the crack in the floor boards. The turn of his neck was so slow and deliberate that Joseph could only stare back, stunned. Hubert's generally-furrowed brow relaxed into something a bit more smug, and the subtle turn at the corners of his mouth felt dangerous. For an instant, Joseph couldn't move, but he could feel the girl next to him digging her fingers into his wrist. Albert followed Hubert's gaze up and bellowed, unnecessarily: "Who put that gap there? Be gone, eavesdroppers!"

(He did. He put it there.) 

Joseph withdrew. He ignored the girl's searching gaze, and whatever question she asked him didn't quite reach his ears, because he heard one word, the word that spooked him: _Gautier_. He busied himself with replacing the carpet and rose to his feet, and with a pounding heart he decided he should exit the same way he came in, down the back staircase. He could make a hasty retreat back to the stables, where he could grab the bag hidden in the tack-room and "borrow" one of the waiting horses. He would ride. Yes, that would do. He moved swiftly but as calmly as he could, passing girls who looked at him with some confusion, oblivious to what was going on but aware that _something_ had just transpired. He felt badly already, knowing it would be the last he would see of them; over the past six weeks he had built up a steady rapport with most of them, and they had been very kind and welcoming to him.

He took the stairs two at a time and dipped through the kitchen once more. The cook called after him, complaining about him coming and going, but he ignored her and took the back door out into the cold air.

"Joseph?" he heard Albert calling through the kitchen, even as he closed the door behind him.

His long legs carried him across the lawn as fast as he could without outright running; to run would be suspicious, and on the damp grass, he could slip and make a fool of himself. No, better to just move carefully, and less suspiciously. He heard the door open again when he was already almost at the stables, and "Joseph!" called again. He turned back to look, and he raised a hand in a carefree way, as if to say he'd be with him in a moment.

But when he turned his eyes back to the stable, he found himself submitted to a breeze of unknown origin, one seemingly pushed up from the aether, as Hubert von Vestra teleported into his path. The dark magic left an electric sting on the air that made the fine hairs on Joseph's arms stand on end. For a beat, he could do nothing but stare into the cold green eyes of his inquirer, and Hubert stared back, waiting to be addressed. Enjoying, no doubt, making Joseph squirm.

"Oh," Joseph mustered, finally. "Hey. Fancy meeting you here."

"Not a very surprising place to find you," Hubert replied, as smooth as he was smug. "I really thought it would be as a client, however."

Albert was catching up to them, huffing a little from stress or frustration. As he approached, he looked a little nervous, suddenly, perhaps realizing his prospective high-roller was also a dark mage. He was, however, not a stupid man, and any man who makes the pleasure of the nobility his business would know the name Gautier in an instant, even if their far-away lands had never produced a client of this _particular_ brothel.

Joseph could see Charmaine watching this from the door, nervously silent. He turned his eyes back to Hubert and kept them there, even as Albert looked him up and down searchingly.

"There must be some mistake," Albert said. "Marquis Vestra, are you sure this is the man you are looking for? Joseph has been a guard for the house in the past six weeks, and a chore boy, too. How could it be that I have had a member of House Gautier mucking stalls?"

Hubert's smirk briefly turned back to his quarry with something like genuine amusement. Joseph felt a tweak of irritation; while he felt no pleasure in what he did, he certainly did not like the idea of being shamed for it, no matter how funny it was. Then Hubert looked back to Albert with a single, casual gesture to Joseph.

"I didn't think I would be making formal introductions this morning, but here we are, I suppose," Hubert said. "This isSylvain Jose Gautier, former Margrave of the dissolved _House_ Gautier. I am here to retrieve him."

Albert looked between the two of them.

Joseph –– or at least the man who called himself Joseph –– knew it was all over.


	2. Honest Living

For the first time in some years, Sylvain felt like himself. Well, not precisely — he had always been himself, and as a rule, he did not believe that people were capable of changing. What he did feel like was that he had become taller, and his attitude less yielding, and his shoulders a little more square.

He had gotten so used to ingratiating himself to noble clients that he’d forgotten what it was like to stand next to another nobleman and be, to some degree, untouchable. He felt that now, especially as Albert excused himself and returned to the house. They stood in silence until he was gone, Sylvain quietly contemplating the conversation ahead of him.

Hubert had no power over him.

“Joseph,” Hubert said, amused. “Not very creative.”

“My middle name is Jose,” Sylvain grumbled. Of course, Hubert knew that, but it bore repeating. “I thought I’d just use that while moving around, but these Adrestians botch the pronunciation, it’s always Joseph to them, so I just...” He made a vague gesture as he tried to pin down the words. “I don’t know. It stuck.”

For a long moment, Hubert gazed at Sylvain, lips pursed, eyes narrowed in blatant, simpering pity.

“I see,” he said, finally. “You just let people call you by the wrong name for months.”

Sort of. Sylvain just shook his head.

“Well, thanks for blowing my cover,” Sylvain said. “Surely a brilliant tactician like you would consider that I was using a fake name for a _reason_.”

“Do you not have pride in your name?” It was a question, but it was stated like a fact, or at very least an undeniable observation. “But I suppose your self-esteem issues are none of my business. Let us address what I came here to inform you of: Lady Edelgard asks for your audience.”

Sylvain had suspected as much from the beginning, as he had known both Edelgard and Hubert long enough to know they were never all that far from each other. Still, an invitation for an audience was a particularly bad omen.

“Do I really get a say in the matter?”

“Of course,” Hubert replied. “If it was an order, I wouldn’t have bothered stepping foot in that den of depravity. I would have simply collected you.”

Sylvain’s pride chafed at that sort of thing, and the curl of his lip undoubtedly gave Hubert the same satisfaction as a good knifing in the ribs. Sylvain could put up a fight and make it clear that he wasn’t the sort of man to be _collected_, slung over the back end of a horse and jostled for hours just to be dumped at Edelgard’s feet. He wasn’t some rat for Hubert to carry home like a good mouser might. But did it matter? Hubert already had his satisfaction knowing the barb had landed, and Sylvain didn’t feel like trying to remove it.

“Thanks,” Sylvain said, dryly. “But the answer is no. Tell Edelgard to send a cute girl next time, and maybe I’ll think about it.”

“You haven’t changed,” Hubert remarked, but he said it as though Sylvain had revealed something, which he most certainly had not. How exhausting — Sylvain never liked talking to these piercing types, let alone negotiating with them.

But it wasn’t a negotiation, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going, and that was final.

“Listen, you have my apologies that you came all the way out here just to get a no, but I’m actually pretty content where I am. It's not exactly glamorous, but…" He trailed and shrugged. What was the point in explaining it to a man like Hubert?

“Very well,” Hubert conceded. “I know I have nothing to persuade you with. I will simply tell Lady Edelgard you refused, and that will be that.”

Sylvain did not feel immediately comforted by such a sentiment. He had the strong impression that the opposite was true — it would be the beginning of something long and troubling, and the longer he refused to face her, the more difficult it would all become.

“Thanks for understanding,” Sylvain said. With anyone else he might have shook hands and gone on with it, but Hubert made no such overtures of agreement or kindness or even friendship. He just stood there, unblinking, looking genuinely displeased.

“I apologize for wasting your time,” Hubert said. “If it weren’t for me, you’d be done all your stable chores by now.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Hubert, or shall I see you to the gates?” Sylvain replied, pointedly.

“Ah, yes. There is, actually,” Hubert replied. His words landed crisply, like it should have been obvious. “My horse has a loose shoe. Perhaps you could put your expertise to use. I’m going to go to the house and see if they have any coffee.”

“Hubert, my friend,” Sylvain said, smiling, a hand landing firmly on Hubert’s shoulder. Hubert’s gaze fell on the offending hand instantly, and Sylvain just gave him a friendly jostle, the kind he might have given to his roughhousing friends back in the day. “I will do anything in my power to get you out of my sight.”

Hubert shrugged his hand off. He was not the sort of person you played chicken with, but Sylvain generally did what made him feel better in the moment, consequences be damned.

“Thank you,” Hubert said.

Off he went, his long black cloak billowing at his heels. Sylvain felt pleased to know, at least, that there wasn’t a single damn coffee bean to be found on the entire property, and that Hubert would either have to choke down tea or else doze in the saddle the whole way home. It was beyond Sylvain’s control, but given that he would likely spend weeks working his way back into Albert’s good books he would take whatever small vengeances he could.

The damage control was going to be a nightmare.

He decided he would re-shoe the horse and then ingratiate himself to Albert later; he was sure that the schmuck would enjoy having a disgraced, impoverished nobleman begging to keep his job. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he would be sent away. Sylvain could imagine being promoted, even. Instead of keeping out of sight until it was time to throw out a drunken or violent lout, or mucking stalls, he’d probably be using his noble lineage for clout, entertaining the guests and lending the house an air of credibility. Who cared if House Gautier was dissolved? He would be a whore too, in some way. Fine. At least he’d still be making money.

But first...

“You can come out now,” Sylvain called.

It took a moment, but Charmaine finally peered out of the stall she'd been hiding in, her eyes round and nervous. He could tell himself all he wanted that he had never masked his personality or lied any more than changing a name or date here or there, but he knew just in her expression that he was a dirty bastard in his own right.

If he really owned up to who he was, he could be a lauded war hero making changes in the world, but instead he was tumbling girls too young for him and bandying about as a common body-for-hire.

“You heard it all, huh?”

Charmaine nodded.

“Listen, I’m sorry. I know it’s not much consolation to say that, but it’s true. It’s just...” he trailed. “It’s complicated.”

“You said you were a soldier,” she said, hesitating. “But you were probably a general, right?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain replied. “I was.”

“And I guess that means you were leading people into battle armed only with scuffle-hoes,” she said, “And securing your own lands, so you could prosper. Sending out the sons and daughters of your farmers to raid and burn the farms of Empire families.”

Sylvain hesitated, and in that moment, he watched her face grow warier still.

“You really hate the nobility,” she said. “But I guess it’s because you were one all along, right? You are what you call them and you hate yourself for it.”

“I fought for the Empire, actually,” Sylvain said. “I was born to House Gautier in Faerghus, but when I was nineteen I swore fealty to the Emperor. I fought on some farmlands, sure. But it wasn’t my call.”

Charmaine’s eyes narrowed.

“Charmaine,” he said, sighing. “It’s... Well. You’re not wrong that I hate myself, but I’d like to think I’m not like them. Honest. I walked away from that life for a reason. Nobody told me to retire and shovel horse shit.”

He could see on her face that she didn’t believe him. It wasn’t a good feeling, but he couldn’t really blame her either. It felt worse to admit he was so used to seeing women disappointed in him that he didn’t feel any compulsion to explain himself better. Was there even a point?

In his heart, Sylvain knew she had already decided something about him, and he had already decided something about her. There was no way to turn that around. He consigned himself to the truth that for the rest of his time at this brothel, he would be skirting her disappointment in him, and that a lot of the other girls would likely share in her opinion once they found out. He would probably be alone.

(He would leave if he thought he could find pay like this within a hundred miles, but felt fairly certainly he couldn’t. He’d looked.)

Sylvain turned his back on her. He had to fix that damned horseshoe, and so he left Charmaine to stew while he fetched a rasp and hammer from the toolbox, along with a couple new clinches. Her silence followed him around, filling his head with things she’d likely never say, but would certainly think every time she laid eyes on him.

When he returned, she was waiting expectantly, her eyes glassy and her bottom lip pushed out again.

“You don’t have anything else to say?” She asked. Her voice trembled with emotion.

“Not really,” Sylvain replied.

“Shame, because you’re so good at shoveling horse shit,” she said, and then she pushed by him.

“Hey,” he started, and he reached to catch her arm, because he wasn’t going to be shoved around. She yanked it from his grip just as fast and wheeled on him.

“I will never speak to you again, Sylvain!” she declared, tears burgeoning on her lower lashes, and then she stormed off, arms wrapped around herself.

Sylvain decided not to watch her go. He was a piece of shit, and watching her leave wouldn’t make him less so. He had a horse to re-shoe, anyway. If he couldn’t fix things with Charmaine, at the very least he could get Hubert far, far away from him.

He fetched the horse in question. Hubert’s horse was as stately as its rider, a strikingly tall creature with a glossy black coat. Its flowing mane was left unbraided, probably to punish the grooms and keep them busy for hours at a time. And while Sylvain generally hesitated to impress his feelings about people on their horses, here it felt plausible to believe the horse was looking down its long nose at him, too.

Tools latched in his belt, Sylvain tied the horse’s bridle to the cross-ties and set about checking the hooves. He knew the horse would be just as troublesome as Hubert the first time he lifted a hoof and the horse immediately put it back down, and after a few minutes of fussing and nearly getting his toes squashed, he found the offending shoe. Two clinches seemed okay, perhaps a little loose, but another was missing entirely, and the rest seemed likely to come out before long. Sylvain pinned the hoof between his knees so he could use both hands and set about removing the old cliches by rasping them down.

He wracked his brains to remember the order of operations. An unsettling memory surfaced instead: an old friend shouting at him so vigorously that spit flew off his teeth, telling him he was a fool for not taking a loose horseshoe so seriously.

“Someone could die!” the memory bellowed. “In the midst of battle, a loose horseshoe can get someone killed! How will we protect––“

Sylvain shook it off, finding himself uncomfortable. It would be better to focus on other things.

By time Sylvain finished, Hubert still had not returned. That was fine by Sylvain — he still had six more stalls to clean, and he set about that with the mentality that a good hour of hard labour would make him too tired to be frustrated anymore. But when that wrapped up, he regretted not trying harder with Charmaine. He missed her company already, and he had a feeling she would be talking with the other girls. He’d probably have a few long, lonely weeks before any of them would come around, either because they no longer felt the other girls would judge them, or because they were curious. Charmaine wouldn’t come around at all, he knew that, but what could he do?

So he locked himself in the tack room and thought about the carefree days of his schooling at the academy for a bit, and fortunately Hubert didn’t show up then, either. He could laugh at himself. Sometimes his own inability to change frustrated him, but there he was, alone in the stable. Why not? He had a hard morning.

Somehow, it just made things feel better.

He wandered back down the long center aisle of the stable to Hubert’s horse. He took a handful of oats out of a burlap storage bag on his way down. The horse looked his way, nostrils flaring.

“You look so mad. You hungry?” Sylvain asked. He offered an handful of oats to the horse, and despite his flattened palm, he got nipped anyway. Not very hard, fortunately, but at least enough for Sylvain to say: “I know why you’re mad. I bet you’re a human. I bet you’re a human that pointed out Emperor Edelgard’s piss-poor riding skills, just once, and so Hubert cursed you and turned you into a horse.”

The horse, being a horse, just nosed at him, rummaging for more oats. Sylvain, being Sylvain, reached under the horse’s chin, just to make horse’s lower lip flap open and closed like a talking mouth.

“You’ve found me out,” Sylvain said, in a haughty voice, as that was the kind of voice he would imagine the horse to have. “I am actually a man! Hubert rides me hard every day, because he’s a petty asshole! Save me, Sylvain.”

He chuckled.

“Tell you what, horse,” Sylvain said, in his own voice. “When you bear that creep back to Enbarr, throw him into a ditch! Not hard enough to break his neck, but at least enough to make a fool of him. Deal?”

“Deal,” said Sylvain, as the horse, lip flapping. And then, as the horse reached to bite: “Ow! Stupid-–”

“Are you finished?” Hubert asked, and Sylvain turned abruptly to see Hubert standing at the end of the stable aisle.

“Horse shoe secured, Marquis Vestra,” Sylvain replied. He had no idea how long Hubert had been standing there, but he supposed it wasn’t worth asking, not unless he wanted to be Hubert’s next ride.

“Thank you,” Hubert replied, crisply. He exited the barn, leaving Sylvain to follow, leading the horse by the reins. The moment he turned his back, he got a nip on his shoulder blade for his trouble. Miserable creature.

The two of them and Hubert’s horse made the trip across the lawn once more, and at the start of the proper lane, Sylvain held the horse while Hubert mounted. To Sylvain’s amusement, it appeared that even Hubert struggled with the horse: on his first attempt to step up into the stirrup, the horse sidestepped, forcing Hubert to shuffle forward on the other foot to keep from being dragged over.

“Be honest with me,” Sylvain said, a chuckle on his voice. “Did you pick this horse because of how it looked?”

“Yes, actually,” Hubert replied, getting up into the saddle properly that time. “He is not my ideal mount, but sometimes image matters most. You have dirt on your face, by the way.”

Sylvain shrugged.

“Always a pleasure, Hubert."

Hubert looked down at him once more. For a moment neither said anything, Hubert lingering and Sylvain feeling tempted to just slap the horse’s ass and send him peeling down the lane, and then Hubert sighed.

“Lady Edelgard also told me that if you change your mind, the offer remains open,” he said.

“She must want me real bad,” Sylvain replied.

“I’ll thank you to never phrase yourself like that ever again,” Hubert warned him, but then his tone softened, so slightly that it must have been imperceptible to anyone without their history. “But yes. It is very important to her, and she would be most grateful to you.”

That piqued Sylvain’s interest a little, but he pushed down the gamut of thoughts that threatened to shake his resolve. He shook his head and instead stepped back a respectful distance.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “Travel well.”

Hubert nodded and turned his horse to go, and without another word, he took off down the lane at a trot, smoothing out into a canter as he gained in distance.

Sylvain watched him go for a moment, silently making plans to drink the whole day out of his memory. He was pretty sure he still had a bottle of rum stashed in the stables, after all, hidden behind some hay bales. Yeah, he decided, that was the best plan. He’d collect that bottle, sprawl out in a clean stall, and wait for tensions inside to cool off a little.

Then, he was sure, everything would be okay.

It turned out, to Sylvain’s great misfortune, that he did not have near enough alcohol left to forget the day. He must have drank most of it with Charmaine the other day, or maybe it was with Nanette. Or was it Victoria? He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter. When two of the girls came to inform him that Albert wanted to see him, he knew tensions were not going to ease for quite some time, no matter how much he drank.

Still, with a pleasant buzz and the bitter high of getting dirty looks from the girls as he entered the house, Sylvain made his way to Albert’s office. He passed Charmaine without meeting her eyes, registering her still-folded arms and her hunched shoulders as she was embraced by another girl. That girl shot him a dirty look, too. The temperature of the room seemed chillier than Faerghus in the dead of winter.

Okay, maybe it would take more than a couple weeks for it to blow over with the girls.

Albert looked up at him from across his desk and with a straight face said, in no uncertain terms: “You no longer are welcome in this fine establishment.”

The pleasant buzz evaporated instantly.

“What?” Sylvain uttered.

“You heard me,” Albert replied. “You are no longer welcome here. You are to pack your things this minute and leave.”

“Arthur,” Sylvain said. “Are you serious? I’ve been such a good fit for this house. Don’t throw it all away because Hubert von Vestra showed up and sullied my good name. I’m not a nobleman, at least not anymore, and I’m... well, Faerghus today isn’t the same as the Faerghus of yesterday.”

But Arthur shook his head furiously, standing up from his chair and gesturing at the door.

“Out,” he ordered. “Out, out, out!”

There wasn’t much to argue there — it wasn’t much of an argument, for one, and it didn’t really inspire any potential for a change of heart, either. And like Charmaine before, Sylvain found his desire to argue his case dwindling rapidly to virtually nothing. Was there a point?

Well, he supposed there was one point for it:

“Albert, I really need the money,” he said.

“Why would you need money?” Albert retorted, furiously. “Many of us work our entire lives to have even a bit of what you had, or have. Did you come here so you could just live in a brothel? Is this some sort of joke?”

_Fuck you,_ Sylvain wanted to say. Albert didn’t work for shit; every candle in that household, every bottle of wine, very damned bit of finery, all of it was paid for by the girls working for him. And what did Albert know about him, anyway? Nothing.

For all Edelgard had done to limit the nobility’s powers, for all she had done to elevate the poor, and teach them to band together in numbers to demand better of the rich, there was only so much that could be done in five years. The nobility still had money — and even if she eventually culled that, too, they would still have social capital, the only kind of capital that couldn’t be repossessed. As long as they had that, there would always be stratification. No one could erase hundreds of years of power in a mere half-decade.

Sylvain didn’t even want his damn capital, and here it was, upsetting his life once more.

“Fine,” he said, sighing. “Give me my outstanding pay. Now, and then I’ll pack and be out of your hair.”

He had no idea where he’d go or how, but at least a little bit of money would get him by. For a moment, Arthur stared him down, and then he went to his money box and fished a little key out of his pocket to unlock it. He counted out coins. It seemed like it couldn’t possibly be enough, but Sylvain knew even without counting it himself that it was probably accurate. It would be even less once he found new lodging, and fed himself, and...

“And I need a horse,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Then you can buy it with the rest of your wages,” Albert replied.

Sylvain weighed his options. He could walk to Enbarr, as it would be his best bet for getting more work quickly, but it was still a long walk, and he didn’t much fancy going there. Even if he wanted to show his face there, he would never make it that far on the roads on foot without provisions. He would need Albert’s support anyway.

But he needed the cash, too. If he didn’t have some gold, he wouldn’t be able to make good on the promises he’d made, and that was the last thing he wanted on his conscience.

“Fine, whatever you want for the old nag,” he replied. “And some supplies for the road.”

He realized, with some bitterness, that he’d been played. Obviously Hubert had designed this situation just for him, and now he had no option but to leave, and all the more reason to rely on Edelgard’s invitation. But on the other hand, he _could_ ask Edelgard for money. She wouldn’t like it, but she was the one looking for him. She could stand to learn to negotiate.

Albert passed him a fraction of the coins, returning the rest to the box. Sylvain let those few remaining coins roll around in his palm for a second. Even adding the few he still had in his possessions and in his boot, it wasn't much to support a man, let alone send away.

Fuck.

But there was no sense in lingering any longer. Sylvain left without even a goodbye to Albert. He did throw a few girls his best pity-me smile as he passed them, but none spoke to him, giving only a range of sour expressions instead. Sylvain returned to the stable with a bitterness growing in his heart. There was little else he could do about his situation but carry on, and no one liked to think their future has been determined for them by someone else. Somehow that felt more humbling than shoveling horse shit.

By time he’d packed his meagre possessions — just a few articles of clothing, a wooden box with a lock on it, a sword wrapped in cloth and an old journal — he was ready to put the place behind him.The old horse that he could now call his was waiting for him in the back stall.

“We’re going to have to come up with a better name for you, huh?” Sylvain said as he opened the stall door. The old nag whisked her tail, standing compliant as he bridled and saddled her. It felt foolish to continue calling her Horse, but Sylvain still felt his imagination lacking. Names like Dauntless or Triumph or Varenne seemed fitting for a beast that could be ridden into battle, the kind of horse that would move with you as one right to the death. What did one even name a flea-bitten old nag who had scarcely seen more than an amble for months? In that context, Horse seemed positively kind.

He took Horse outside and mounted her. She was slightly too small for him, and he thought for a second he could have just forgone the saddle and instead wrapped his ankles around her belly like she were an overgrown pony.

“Oh man, this is going to be a ride,” Sylvain groaned to himself as the old horse hesitated to move into a trot. In his academy days and in times of war, he was used to bold animals trained to leap and kick and bite on command, and while it didn’t come as a surprise, it was still painful to be on a horse so... unresponsive.

How was he going to catch up with Hubert like that?

And, perhaps worse –– Hubert was _absolutely_ going to make fun of him.


	3. To Enbarr

The long road road to Enbarr stretched down from Merceus, passing through hundreds of tiny hamlets, skirting the mountains flanking Hresvelg territory, until finally reaching the southernmost tip of Fodlan. Sylvain had taken that road many times, generally on the war march, but it wasn’t his favourite route. Better than the cold roads of Faerghus, certainly, and the humid air stretching into the Leicester Alliance, but living so close to Enbarr wasn’t Sylvain’s ideal, either. It made him very hard to find by the people he really wouldn’t want to come looking for him — Enbarr, after all, was as far as one could possibly get from Gautier lands without leaving the continent entirely — but being found by the Emperor wasn’t exactly pleasant, either.

Still, it was a pretty road. That time of year, especially, with the trade routes slowing down for the season and the trees starting to turn. The oak trees that flanked the road rose so tall and thick that Sylvain felt he was in nature’s fortress, and his own red hair matched it perfectly. He liked being amongst nature. He had grown up amongst the mountains and coniferous trees as a boy, and those woods had a different life than the southern forests. Creatures in Faerghus were as hardy and dangerous as its people, and they did not make for quaint woodland scenes.

But by time he’d been on the road for an hour, Sylvain had already resigned himself to never catching up with Hubert. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to, mind — perhaps it would be better if he just showed up on his own, denying the old ghoul any sort of credit — but he thought maybe he would be less bored with some company.

Sylvain seldom traveled alone. He loathed it, and he was quite sure he never would have gone out to the brothel in the first place if his initial trip out hadn’t been in a carriage with a couple girls who had whittled the hours to nothing with their good company. Traveling with the military had almost felt like a treat, too, hundreds of different people he could talk to, a crowd he could vanish into or entertain as he pleased. His battalion had been a crew of brothers and sisters, ready to die for each other. His friends had been his family. And even in the worst of times, when he had felt like he wanted to be anywhere but there, at least he’d had Felix and Ingrid. Sometimes Dimitri.

_Sometimes..._

Sylvain stoppered that thought. As a general rule, he didn’t like to think about Dimitri. Whenever he did, he felt himself sinking into some sort of emotional quicksand, and alone on the road, far from the walls of Enbarr, he didn’t want to trifle with any of those feelings.

He dug in his heels to encourage Horse to try a quicker pace. She picked it up for about a hundred yards before slowing to a walk again, and Sylvain sighed heavily.

It would take forever to get there.

Sylvain leaned back in the saddle, raised his voice to the heavens and bellowed:

“Fuck Albert!”

Birds shot out of the trees nearby, and Horse tossed her head, whickering loudly. Sylvain laughed to himself, reaching down to firmly pat Horse on the neck and mutter some soothing words before laughing again. He moved the reins to one hand so he could cup his other hand to his mouth and bellow again:

“FUCK Hubert!”

The birds were already gone, and this time, Sylvain could appreciate the sound of his own voice bouncing around the trees, shattering the ambient noise of the woods — rustling leaves, woodland creatures in the bracken, Horse’s hooves on the broad dirt road. Sylvain found that when he was pissed off, or upset, or disappointed, or frustrated, all he had to do was make himself laugh, and things felt the slightest bit better. He was fortunate to be the sort of man who didn’t let things like that eat at him. He was the kind of man who didn’t have ghosts, or at the very least didn’t give them the satisfaction of getting to him.

Sylvain did what he pleased. He made his own life, for better or for worse, and despite being a broke, unemployed, no-good former-noble with nothing more than a single pack and the world’s most broken-down horse, he was at least confident that he wouldn’t be that way forever. Everything — everything except being no-good, maybe — was transient.

“FUUUUUCK ME!” he shouted, loud enough that his throat felt strained.

The woods remained silent.

Sylvain exhaled, long and slow. He felt some peace.

It was not meant to last, however. Not a hundred yards up the road, he could see a cluster of men gathered, their covered wagon pulled off to the side. He could tell they were armed just by the way they stood, and they didn’t look like common merchants. Sylvain glanced up at the sky. Sundown loomed within the hour. Well, it was getting to be about that time anyway. Hoping for an uneventful night was too much to ask for.

“Good evening,” Sylvain called, sitting tall in his saddle — not that it really made him look any better, given Horse’s modest stature. He thought maybe he could just ride by, but he had slung his sword to his hip before he left just in case, too.

The men watched him approach. That sort of attention never boded well, and even thought it had been some years since he had served in any war, Sylvain felt the itch of a fight in his fingers, in his instincts. The men watched him and he watched them, and when they moved to block his path upon approach, he knew he was about to be in some measure of trouble.

How much trouble was up in the air. But some trouble, perhaps even more trouble than he’d gotten up to already, was inevitable.

“Move aside, folks,” he said, but he was forced to pull back on Horse’s reins and pull her to a short stop. She tossed her head, resisting the bit, but Sylvain held fast. “I don’t want to give you any trouble."

A guffaw passed amongst them.

“That’s not how it works, boy,” a man piped up.

_Boy! _For a man already into his thirties, that felt rather harsh. Sylvain smiled despite the wound and shifted his weight in the stirrups.

“Do you mean to relieve me of what I have?” Sylvain asked. “I won’t just let you take it, you know.”

He was being sized up by all of them at once, a full-body scan that absolutely underestimated his skill. He couldn’t really blame them for that — he had not worn liveries for some years, and his face wasn’t terribly known amongst the people of the Empire. His rather dashing (if he said so himself) physique was belied by his loose shirt and trousers. In a suit of plate armor with fine chainmail underpinnings and velvet tabards, he might have had more to steal, but he would have looked more threatening, too.

The nearest man approached to take Horse by the bridle. With one hand, Sylvain pulled the reins hard, and Horse backed up uneasily, and not at all like a warhorse would. Fuck. With his other, he reached across his hips and drew the sword. Despite its modest burlap wrappings, the sheath hid a blade of silver. It glinted in the light, a higher, whiter colour than any steel or iron could hope to be.

All of the highwaymen looked at it. It was a dangerous weapon, but a fine one.

“Clear a path,” Sylvain warned. “Or I will cut my way through.”

“You think that you and that bag o’ bones are a match for all of us?” one of them asked, a laugh on his breath. He drew a blade of his own, a dagger as long as his forearm. It didn't look like it had been cleaned in some time.

“Well, I doubt the horse will do anything,” Sylvain said. And, as if to make a point, he chose to turn the sword in his hand, just once, in a simple flourish. He watched their eyes follow the end of the blade, and the fineness of its point when he brought it back to a halt, poised for a swing. Just so they knew that he hadn’t come across a fine sword by luck or chance or any reason but his own adeptness in using it.

“Kill him,” a highwayman ordered.

Not the answer he was hoping for, but it was what it was. Sylvain crossed his leg over to the right side of the saddle and he slid down from it, boots hitting the dirt hard. He gave Horse a hard rap on the behind and this alone was enough to prompt the poor creature to spook — the man holding her let go immediately and she bolted, hopefully out of harm’s reach. Sylvain would worry about that later: the first was upon him, dagger raised, and Sylvain ducked under it and plunged his sword right into the man’s gut. When the man jostled against him, he withdrew just as fast, sending a streak of blood across the ground.

The second came next, shouting, and Sylvain shouted too as he sidestepped a lunge, pivoted and slashed across the man’s back before whirling to the front and putting his blade cross-wise a third’s body. By time both hit the ground, he was already squaring off against the fourth. He had to jump back to dodge an axe that might have ripped open his belly, and then back again when the fourth came right back with another. The swing after that he knew he could not dodge, but since it came overhead, he gripped his own blade in half-sword and raised it above his head to catch the blow. His sword rang out on impact, and while his attacker’s eyes were raised to see his failed strike, Sylvain kicked out, driving his foot into the man’s groin.

“Sorry,” Sylvain muttered as the man collapsed, but before he could finish the job with a plunge of his blade, a fifth man was stepping in to fill the void. Sylvain dispatched him too, taking his thigh. That man crumpled at his feet.

Having just seen him take out five of their men in under a minute, the rest of the highwaymen hesitated, circling Sylvain but making no attempt to attack. The fallen who hadn't bled out yet moaned at Sylvain’s feet, and he took the time to kick a man’s dagger away. He didn’t fancy any cheap shots at his ankles, either.

“You can still let me go,” he declared.

And then, turning to look at the men behind him, he realized that two of the men had set upon Horse up the road, one grabbing her bridle and another tearing the pack from her back. Sylvain watched his wooden chest fall from his pack and land in the dirt, and the man stooped to snatch it up again.

“No!” Sylvain gasped, and then he was struck from behind.

His vision went dark. His knees hit the floor. Panic flooded him for a moment, but so did a strange peacefulness: ah, so this was it! _Finally._ He wasn’t going to die killed by loyalists from Faerghus, or at the hands of a dear friend, or as collateral in a war he never wanted.

He was going to die because his dumb ass thought to check on the horse. Compassion was laughable sometimes, wasn’t it?

His grip on his sword still felt tight, though, and that grip was enough to hold him to consciousness. And then, lifting his head, he realized that his vision wasn’t dark at all –– the ground was, and the ground was shifting, consumed by some strange lightless mass.

He watched this mass rise from the dirt and form itself into tendrils, tendrils that wrapped themselves around the throats of the highwaymen and smothered them. The men twitched and struggled but nothing could save them, not as the great forces of darkness snuffed them out like candles. Their bodies fell in heaps as they or their bodies gave in, one by one, human heaps in the dirt.

_Ah,_ Sylvain thought. _Hubert._

Sure enough, Hubert appeared before him, his thigh-high leather boots level with Sylvain’s nose. He did not offer Sylvain any assistance in getting up; no, he’d already done his kindness for the day. Sylvain picked himself up, head singing. He felt around with his free hand, but he found no blood. The blow must have felt harder than it actually was.

Fear tended to do that.

“Good thing I was just up the road, hmm?” Hubert hummed.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that Sylvain had actually caught up with Hubert, so Sylvain just dusted himself off, checked all his teeth by running his tongue over them, and then said: “Yeah. Good thing.”

He sheathed his sword. For good measure, he picked up the dagger and hooked it in his belt, and then he took the axe too. He looked to poor Horse, who like all cowardly horses was breathing so hard her chest visibly rose and fell, even from a distance. Sylvain looked to Hubert.

Hubert had picked up the box. He turned it over between his hands.

“Don’t,” Sylvain said. “That’s mine.”

He strode over and took it from Hubert’s hands, and then he collected his bag from the dirt and replaced the box within it. He ignored Hubert’s curious look and simply said: “Why’d you wait for me?”

“I knew you would come,” Hubert replied, simply.

“How’d you know that I was going to come, huh?” Sylvain asked. He paced around Hubert, picking up the cloth-wrapped chunks of cheese and the half-loaf of bread that had fallen in the dirt. He dusted the bread off on his trousers but felt certain he’d be feeling that good old Hresvelg-land soil on his teeth anyway. Sylvain glanced back to Hubert, gesturing with the bread. “You know what I think?”

“No,” Hubert replied. “I don’t know what you think about.”

“I think,” Sylvain said, “you went back to the house and told Albert something that made him kick me out, and then, knowing I would leave, you waited down the road. Is that right?”

“Correct,” Hubert said. “But I should make it clear that was my own choice. I felt that Her Majesty’s desires were more important than yours.”

“Right,” Sylvain replied, hanging his head for a moment. Sylvain decided, right then, that he would ask Edelgard for double. If he had to guilt her a little by ratting out Hubert, he would. It was turning into that sort of day. He fixed Hubert with a firm look and heaved a great sigh. “Did you tell these pricks to stop me?”

“Oh, no,” Hubert replied, and he had the decency to look even mildly offended at the suggestion. “That was just fortunate timing.”

“Then thanks,” Sylvain said. Credit had to go where credit was due, at least. “I probably would have gotten my ass kicked back there if you didn’t step in.”

Hubert nodded. (Asshole.)

“It was the least I could do,” he said. “After the regrettable day you’ve had, at least.”

Sylvain had no problem imagining that Hubert had used cloaking magic of some sort to sneak by the highwaymen himself, but he supposed at this point there was no point in asking questions that had obvious answers. He sighed and started down the road towards Horse, making sweet whistles to try to ingratiate himself again. When he recaptured her, he made his way back to Hubert, who had fetched his own horse in the meantime.

“So just to be clear, that offer is still open, right?” Sylvain asked as he mounted. He realized Horse was so short that he was forced to look up at Hubert, and he knew Hubert had noticed the same, because he was smirking. Sylvain sighed: “It better be open.”

“Of course,” Hubert said. “What prompted you to change your mind?”

Sylvain shook his head.

“I figured I owe the little lady at least an audience,” Sylvain said. “After everything she did for me years ago, anyway. Maybe catch up and see how things have changed in Enbarr.”

“Ah,” Hubert replied. “You’re broke.”

“Nah, I just...” He trailed, but that stung. Sylvain turned Horse around to follow Hubert down the path, the poor beast jittery and nervous, ears still laid back. Sylvain stroked her neck, but he could only ignore Hubert for so long, so he finally said, “But yeah. Seeing as I just lost my job, and all.”

Hubert glanced at him.

“When Lady Edelgard asked me to find you and I tracked you down here, I was shocked to discover it was indeed possible for a disgraced nobleman to piss away enough to end up as a stable boy.”

“I was a bodyguard, actually,” Sylvain said, tersely. “I just took care of the horses on the side for a bit of extra cash.”

“That isn’t particularly helping your image,” Hubert replied. “And how much of that did you spend drinking like a fish?”

“Oh, you didn’t stalk me long enough to find out?”

“Whatever gives you the impression that I have so little to do that I would bother?” Hubert asked. Sylvain knew a redirection when he heard one — obviously Hubert had never personally looked into him, he had sent some flunky to do it — but it probably wouldn’t serve to point that out. It did make him ponder Charmaine, and imagine, for just an instant, that she had been a double agent, and that thought made him feel paranoid.

“I have no idea,” Sylvain replied. “What does a Minister of the Imperial Household do? Ensure Edelgard has clean sheets every fortnight, make sure the windows are closed when it’s about to rain?”

Hubert chuckled.

“It is also important that her vanity is arranged so that she can wash her face and brush her hair out at exactly nine in the evening,” he replied.

Sylvain rolled his eyes.

“Do you dress her, too? Make sure her steak is properly sliced so no mouthful is big enough to choke on? Sweep the floor in front of her feet lest she sully her shoes?”

“You can come up with all the ludicrous scenarios you’d like, Sylvain, and I will simply play along,” Hubert said. “If I did those things, I still wouldn’t consider any of that beneath me.”

“But shovelling stables,” Sylvain said, “is obviously the kind of job a drunkard would take.”

Hubert shook his head.

“Even a stableboy has an important role to play in the rebuilding of an empire,” Hubert replied. “But you’re being obtuse if you think that is my issue. My issue is that while Lady Ingrid acts as steward to everything north of Fhirdiad, ensuring your people’s welfare, you scrounge for money in service to yourself.”

“They aren’t my people anymore,” Sylvain replied. “I never wanted ‘em. And despite your opinion, I was actually happy at that brothel. The pay was decent, and I had good company.”

“I refuse to believe that in six weeks, you developed a closer bond with a bunch of prostitutes and their rat king than you had with us,” Hubert replied, voice growing a little bit more clipped.

Sylvain raised an eyebrow. _Us?_

He had spent so much of the war in Faerghus that sometimes he forgot that he was a Black Eagle. Sylvain tended to think of himself as something in between: it had been his role in the whole affair, after all. Hubert’s comment wasn’t wrong, but it did feel bittersweet. Sylvain wished he had been with them more. He might have been a different person for it.

“We put the war behind us, didn’t we? I’m trying to make a life away from all that. Edelgard wants us to cast the nobility aside, and forget crests, right? Well, that was just what that looked like for me,” Sylvain explained. “And maybe more than the rest of you, those of you who still live in big, fancy manors, and still ride big, fancy horses, and have money to spend on big, fancy clothes.”

“I fully understand the dissonance,” Hubert replied. “But when Lady Edelgard decided to overthrow the systems that shackled us to the worthiness of our blood, it was also in the interest of allowing greatness to flourish.”

Hubert fixed him with a long, calm look, and his usual catlike smile had vanished, leaving only genuine disappointment that Sylvain felt permeating his skin, his muscles, his bones, right down to the marrow.

“You have many genuine talents, Sylvain. You squander the opportunities she gave us.”

“The opportunities we gave ourselves,” Sylvain replied, curtly.

“Yes,” Hubert agreed. “But none of us would be here if it weren’t for her.”

No, Sylvain thought, they wouldn’t be. If he turned back the pages of his life to a time before Edelgard threw down her mighty gauntlet, he would find himself at Garreg Mach, nineteen and preoccupied with having as much fun as possible before he settled down into his future. In that life, he lorded over his lands, lent his seed to an army of imperfect, unwanted children, and maybe, just maybe, had a wife who wanted more than just an erection out of him. That Sylvain couldn’t have imagined living in a brothel, working for his dinner and the roof over his head, and serving his whims instead of any knightly ideals.

That Sylvain would be dead.

“You could have done anything you wanted with the Gautier lands,” Hubert said, finally. Sylvain wished he was dead; it seemed better than having this conversation. Hubert sighed. "And you chose this."

“Well, I didn’t,” Sylvain said. “I didn’t deserve to serve those people.”

He’d gotten heated. He didn’t realize it until he’d already said it. Hubert pursed his lips, but his expression was so inscrutable that Sylvain couldn’t even hope to guess whether he thought to agree or disagree. Hubert just said nothing.

“Sorry,” Sylvain said, voice a little low. “I appreciate that you’ve gone to all this trouble to get me, and that both of you see something in me, but... No.”

Hubert just shook his head.

“We have a long ride ahead of us, and it is getting quite dark,” he said. He paused and raised a hand, and a glyph of light circled his palm for an instant. When it dissipated, a dim orb of light floated around his head, and he made a gesture like tossing it — it drifted up the road, lighting their path without being so bright as to ruin their night vision. Finally, he suggested: “Perhaps we should conserve our tongues and choose to appreciate nature instead.”

Sylvain knew in his heart that Hubert had never paused to appreciate nature in his entire damned life, but it was the gesture that counted, whatever that gesture may have been. He just muttered in agreement, turning his attention to the road ahead.

The orb snaked back and forth in lazy arcs, sometimes dipping around behind them and shooting forward once more to catch up. Horse shook her head and stepped up a little faster when it moved around her hocks, and once more, Sylvain reached to stroke her neck, murmuring whatever calming words he could think of. Mostly for her, but partly for him, too.

Hubert’s eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead. But Sylvain knew, in the same way most people knew, that his focus was elsewhere.

By time dawn rose, the sky lifting its dark velvet veil and the sun starting to bleed into the horizon, Sylvain deeply appreciated that silence, boring as it was. As the hours had gone by, he’d found it easier and easier to focus, or at least reach back into his memories and find his ability to travel well, or be in the company of people who knew who he used to be. It felt like reconnecting with an old lover. It chafed at first, trying to remember how to be the person he’d been, but before long, a certain muscle memory kicked in.

It wasn’t that he’d missed long, overnight marches, either. Back in the day, he could complain for hours about the ache in his thighs, and the jostling his joints had taken after hours in the saddle. After particularly long hacks, especially through mountain regions with rivers too deep for the war caravans to ford, he’d even felt like all his body had turned to pudding, and walked bandy-legged and ached for days, swearing he would end the war himself just to never have to do it again. But back in the saddle, Sylvain relished the memories of that kind of pain. It came with a feeling of accomplishment, and he’d never been taller than when he was mounted on a grand warhorse.

That feeling was so exciting that he’d seldom ever slept in the saddle, either, not like Hubert did, his head nodding forward and then jerking up over and over again. Sylvain had smiled when he noticed, any feeling of annoyance buried under the satisfaction that the trip had been anything but smooth for Hubert. He got his petty victories where he could.

They were coming up now on the terrain around Enbarr. The countryside was part of Enbarr itself, though it fell well outside the city-fortress’ walls. The trees gave way to open farmland, a lush grassland of peasant villages that knitted together great patches of property on which to grow the wheat, oats and vegetables that southern Adrestia was known for. The hills of Hresvelg territory were mineral-rich, and it left the soil fertile and prosperous even before the many talented mages known to the region made their rounds to infuse the crops with magic. 

It was also the prettier road into Enbarr, Sylvain remembered, because if you went into the city from any other direction, you would cross through the marshes. Those marshes, fed by the seawater that flowed through the muddy flats, were laced with short walls meant to trap seawater and act as weirs for fish like perch and trout. The salt pans, they were called. That salt was distributed across the Empire and, in times of peace, along friendly foreign trading routes. Given Edelgard had unified Fódlan, Sylvain supposed it was better for everyone. Maybe food would taste better in Faerghus with salt being traded north in exchange for furs and ore.

They passed a horse and cart on the road. The driver raised a hand in salutation, and Sylvain did the same, passing on his merry way. Further down the road, Sylvain could see a church with a missing roof, and as they approached, it seemed to Sylvain it had been abandoned entirely. He looked to Hubert, tempted to wake him to ask, but the he spied a place where the creek ran close to the road. It seemed to Sylvain that they were overdue for a break, even with only an hour or so left to go.

Sylvain reined in his devoted steed. Horse stopped, but Hubert’s big black horse kept walking, almost oblivious.

“You see, Horse?” Sylvain muttered. “That horse would squash you in any beauty contest, but he’s so badly trained that he’d just keep walking that road endlessly, not realizing his rider is asleep. Goes to show looks don’t mean much, huh?”

He dismounted and took Horse by the bridle, coaxing her to jog to catch up with Hubert’s horse. It took a moment, but he managed to grab the other horse by the reins, tugging back on the bit to slow them all to a stop. This sudden change in pace jostled Hubert just enough to rouse him from sleep.

“Coffee,” Hubert muttered.

“I have some tea,” Sylvain offered.

“Ugh,” Hubert groaned, but he shook himself off and then slid from the saddle. Sylvain bit his tongue to not tease, as he figured a poorly-rested Hubert was even more dangerous than a fully alert one. Hubert looked up at the sky, and then at the road ahead. “Why are we stopping? We are nearly there.”

“Yeah, but there’s a creek,” Sylvain said. “We should water the horses.”

“I suppose,” Hubert said. He said this like his coffee deprivation should be met with suffering in equal measure by all parties, but he walked stiffly to take his horse’s bridle from Sylvain and followed him to the roadside.

“What’s his name?” Sylvain asked.

“Whose?”

“The horse,” Sylvain replied, nodding towards the black horse.

“Oh,” Hubert said, like the horse’s name didn’t matter. “Blackheart.”

“That’s not bad, actually,” Sylvain said. “Maybe a little cliche.”

“Is yours’ name really so much better?” Hubert asked.

“Horse?”

“Horse?” Hubert replied. “Yes, I mean the horse.”

“No, her name is Horse.”

Hubert stared at him, and then he shook his head. Sylvain burst out laughing, dropping the reins entirely. Having been ridden through the night, Horse wasted no time nosing her way to the waterline, and she pressed her muzzle right in. Great big bubbles of air streamed from her nose. Hubert let Blackheart do the same, but in the process the horse carelessly sidestepped against him, knocking Hubert aside.

“You know,” Sylvain said, “you really should get a horse with some basic manners. I can’t guarantee it’ll look as cool, but at least you won’t get nearly taken out by it every other hour.”

“I suppose so, but it matters little. Generally I just take a carriage when I need to go anywhere,” Hubert replied.

“Sure.”

For a moment the two were quiet, and then Sylvain asked: “Well, what would you name this old nag?”

Hubert thought about it for a moment, a thumb under his chin, and then he suggested: “Damsel.”

“Fuck no,” Sylvain replied. “Anyone who heard that would never let me live it down. You don’t name an animal after a woman, it gets weird fast.”

(It was true –– when Sylvain was a boy, his brother had several dogs, and he’d named them all for women he hated, so that when they misbehaved he could beat them, and when they were pleasant he could delight in having them all follow him around, begging for his attention.)

Hubert shrugged, seemingly out of ideas.

“Besides,” Sylvain said. “I don’t intend to keep her. She’s not really my style.”

Hubert gave an amused noise at that.

“She certainly isn’t,” he said.

“Yeah. Anyway,” Sylvain said. “You want some of that tea? It’s not the greatest stuff, a little bitter, but it’s something.”

Hubert shuddered.

“No, thank you,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“I got some cheese and bread,” Sylvain said.

Hubert smirked, and he shifted to his horse’s pack to rummage. From within the fine leather saddlebags he produced two pastries, each wrapped in clean white linen, and he held one out to Sylvain. It had been baked with apple slices, and even nearly a day old, it had a pleasant glaze to it that watered Sylvain’s mouth immediately. He took it with a grin, immediately biting off a corner.

He hadn’t eaten anything so nice in months.

“Thanks,” Sylvain said. “This doesn’t make us even for you sabotaging my job, butit certainly helps. It’s delicious.”

Hubert smiled, something like genuine amusement.

“Don’t thank me, then.”

“I take it back, then,” Sylvain said. “Fuck you, Hubert.”

“Fuck you too, Sylvain,” Hubert replied.

Sylvain laughed, bright and uproarious. Neither said anything for a moment after that, Sylvain tucking into the pastry like a man starved for a hundred years. Birdsong started to ring through the fields as the sun peeked over the tree-line, the sky a lovely pink. Hubert replaced the other pastry in his saddlebags, instead pulling out a skein of water and drinking deeply from that. Above their heads, a pair of sparrow hawks cruised the sky for prey, and in the fields, deer grazed for just a moment longer, ekeing out their time before the farmers and their sheep would chase them back into the woods.

Sylvain glanced back down the road, as did Hubert; the magic light continued to drift, but it grew duller by the pass, and as both of them watched, it blipped out of existence entirely. Hubert yawned, as did Sylvain.

“Well,” Hubert said. “Shall we head into Enbarr?”

“Might as well,” Sylvain agreed.

There was no sense putting it off.


	4. Changes

The last time Sylvain had been in Enbarr, he’d been overwhelmed.

For one, it was home to far more people than he’d ever seen in one place before. Even growing up partly in Fhirdiad, he had never felt the crush of people there like he did as an adult in Enbarr for the first time. The houses stood wall to wall with some streets scarcely wider than a man's open arms, shops at street level with living quarters above. Refuse spilled out of the artisan’s shops and into the gutters. Eighteen-foot walls divided the city into neighbourhoods, and to expand the city over the centuries, more and more walls had been built, circling in yet more homes and shops, each defensive wall larger than the last. Because much of the city sloped, stairs had been built in many places to accommodate the growth, but the end result was that the refuse flowed downward.

The first time he'd visited Enbarr, it had been on a trip with his class at the Officer's Academy. Sylvain had a very particular memory of walking up one set of scummy stairs only to discover that a butcher shop had made its home at the top, and the resulting blood and offal flowed down the steps before making its way into the gutters. He’d listened to the animals squealing and looked to Edelgard, wondering if she could hear the great racket from her rooms in the palace. He could see on her face that it was true, and over the dying bellows of an ox, Edelgard had just said: “These are the mistakes of previous emperors. Under my rule, this city will smell of roses instead of blood.”

He’d thought it was a rather insane thing for someone to say. He’d asked her how it was possible, exactly, to do such a thing without razing the city and starting from scratch.

“Ask me again in ten years,” she’d declared. “And I will not need to explain a thing.”

At the time he'd thought that was her usual brand of audacity, the kind most people trotted out when they didn't actually have a plan yet. As a man, he believed in her honesty: she was right.

For a city that had stood for over a millennium, that Enbarr had changed so dramatically in mere years was astounding. As they passed through the city gates and began the long trek through the busy crowds to the Imperial Palace, Sylvain found himself craning his neck so much that he thought he’d be sore the next day. Hubert kept glancing at him with a growing pride.

“Incredible, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Sylvain agreed.

He had a very complicated relationship with Edelgard von Hresvelg, but he had never been able to fault that her cause was just. Her goals, though ambitious, did not seem nearly as unattainable now as they did at the start of the revolution. She had vowed to reforge Fódlan, and she had started lifting Enbarr from the ashes first, retrofitting the old city for a modern era with new construction projects. Nearly every other building was covered in wooden scaffolding, and Sylvain could see hints at what was going on underneath: new roofs, improved windows, better drainage, sloping gutters. Signs were posted about ordinances. A collector passed through the crowds picking up horse shit, and though they passed a number of butchers, the cobblestones were free of rotting meat.

It didn't smell like a city at all.

“Some people were upset about the modifications she proposed to some of the older buildings,” Hubert explained. “But I think we managed to balance their nostalgia for old architecture with ingenuity. Certainly no one complained when we rebuilt much of the flimsier housing. But you see that building — there — is getting new aqueducts. It improves sanitation. Previously the people living in this district shared a half dozen water pumps, and it made it difficult for people to maintain the cleanliness of their homes and the streets. Now, there are twice as many pumps, and within ten years each household should have its own water source.”

“Wow,” Sylvain said. He didn’t care much for specifics, but he still admired the results. “Certainly looks like a lot of work, too...”

“An opportunity for the best and brightest to exercise their skills,” Hubert agreed. “All paid for, of course, by the nobility...”

Sylvain nodded, his attention drifting from Hubert and back to the sights and sounds around him. Streams of people passed on either side of them, some pushing hand-carts full of building supplies, others carrying baskets of groceries. The people looked clean and bright. Sylvain remembered the last time he passed through here, after he’d told Edelgard he was done. He couldn’t have gone twenty yards without a beggar asking him for coins. Now, most people looked like they had more than he did, and while he was sure there was plenty of strife and complication under the surface, it was lovely to imagine just for one second that things really were right in the world.

“She’s really doing it,” Sylvain said, quietly. “I wonder what Fhirdiad looks like...”

“It is slowly improving, too,” Hubert remarked. “Certainly not to this degree or nearly as quickly, but it is much better than the miserable state it was left in by the Church of Seiros."

(Sylvain wished he hadn't said that. The reminder put smells in his head that felt so real they burned his nose hairs.)

"Much of the effort in the former Kingdom is focused on assessing the land for mining, and easing over tensions with remaining loyalists. Once those things have been smoothed over, I suspect Fhirdiad will very quickly start to look much the same. Edelgard has been preparing a mission for months.”

"Is that what she wants me for?"

"No," Hubert said, curtly.

Sylvain just nodded again. Just as well. He struggled to imagine anywhere in Faerghus so cheery; it had been blighted for much of his adult life, and what happy memories he had been given as a child seemed foolish now, coloured by his own ignorance and naïvety. He found it difficult to believe Faerghus could ever flourish. It was even more difficult to believe Faerghus would _enjoy_ flourishing.

He thought of the harsh, infertile lands of House Gautier and House Fraldarius, each more adept at producing resilient soldiers than food for the people. He thought of House Galatea, and how it could not produce even that much. They seemed a world away now, not just on the other side of the continent, but like they were in another time, another era. Perhaps the people living on those lands had adapted under a united Fódlan, but perhaps not. Perhaps they resented being told to change. Perhaps they fought to be miserable, because there was honour and dignity and pride in being the kind of people that could survive in those conditions.

Misery was a Faerghus man's best company. Sylvain knew that intimately.

He thought of Ingrid, who he hadn’t heard from in years. She almost certainly was still there. He wondered if she still swore fealty to Edelgard, or if she had broken under the hopelessness of it all like he had. No, he decided, just as quickly: she was made of tougher mettle than he was. She would be determined to restore dignity to Faerghus' suffering. That was the knightly thing to do, wasn’t it?

He thought of Felix, too, and he truthfully didn't know whether his best friend was even alive. He felt strongly that he was — after all, he and Felix shared a bond unbreakable by time or distance, and if Felix was dead, then Sylvain was sure he would be as well. But that bond could not tell him where Felix was, or what he was doing, or what he thought of this changed world. A man like Felix might adore a world where the people were cared for by a diligent ruler, and the strong devoted themselves and their sword arms to whatever hindered the liberty and comfort of the people.

A man like Felix might still be angry about it, too.

Sylvain couldn’t say.

“Here,” Hubert remarked. “We leave our horses here; they are no longer permitted within the palace walls.”

It made Sylvain oddly sad to leave Horse in the waiting hands of an attendant, but as he shouldered his bag and watched Horse and Blackheart both led off to the stables for a proper feeding, rest and watering, he looked forward to seeing the palace on his own two feet. He looked to Hubert and felt himself being looked over. Sylvain met Hubert's polite disdain with a defensive smile.

“You’ll need a change of wardrobe before seeing Edelgard,” he said.

Sylvain looked down at himself. He was so used to his own smell that he could only guess he smelled like the stables, but his body was relatively clean. His clothes were a little more worse for wear. His simple cloak had leaves and dirt well up the hem, and his tunic was marred by stains that a hundred washes could not scrub out. His boots were okay; the welted soles still kept the water out when it rained, but the leather was beaten so soft they slouched, and this coming season would be their last. Sure, Sylvain supposed. He could use a change of clothing.

“I have another shirt in my bag,” Sylvain said. "It's a little cleaner, maybe…"

“No,” Hubert said, pointedly. “We’ll bring you to the tailor first.”

“Uh…? I'm here because I'm broke."

“I’ll not have Lady Edelgard look upon you like this,” Hubert replied, so firmly that Sylvain imagined he would be beat unconscious and dressed by force if he protested. The few coins he had felt much too light in his pockets, and Sylvain was hesitant to be parted from them. He doubted they could even pay for even the most modest outfit available on the second-hand market.

“Are you buying?” Sylvain asked. His pride took a blow, but it made him laugh to double down on it with a simper: "Take pity on this poor wretch, kind sir?"

Hubert sighed, and he gestured for Sylvain to follow.

Sylvain hadn’t seen himself in a mirror for some time. Though the girls at the brothel had a number of them in order to best rouge their lips and pluck their eyebrows, he’d seldom been privy to their dressing rooms, and never alone at that. If he'd had, he might have preened a bit, but the best he could do on the average day was shave over a washbasin and hope one of the girls would point out if he missed a spot. When he was really lucky, one of the girls, usually Amanda, would pamper him by doing it herself, and she would trim his hair too. She liked to feel like she was taking care of men, Sylvain knew, and it was fine by him to be doted on.

As such, it felt nice to not only see himself, but get to see himself in a full-length mirror. Standing in the tailor’s fitting studio, he admired himself in the mirror first naked, and then in a few different outfits. He had fared pretty well for someone who hadn’t seen the rigours of war for some years, he thought. Heavier in some general way, and he’d lost some definition to his figure, but that was fixable. With some money from Edelgard, he could eat a little better, and if he could muster up the energy for drills, he could turn that extra bulk into muscle. There was no reclaiming his youth, but he'd felt thoroughly aged for so long that he liked having a handsomeness more fitting to his middle years. Losing the last vestiges of boyishness opened him up to a whole other kind of woman, too, and he certainly hadn't lost his appeal with the girls for it. Sylvain felt good — better than he expected he would, even. 

(No ass, though. Until that very moment he’d entertained the hope that bouncing schmucks out the door and shoveling horse shit had been a magical remedy for developing one, but no such luck. He figured if he hadn’t developed an ass by thirty, he was doomed to a life with a flat one. _Can't have it all_, he thought sarcastically.)

“I don’t want to be here forever, Sylvain,” Hubert scolded him from the other side of the curtain. “Pick some clothes and be done with it.”

“Please, like Edelgard doesn’t have a thousand other things to do aside from see me,” he said, but he did as he was told anyway. He settled on a collared shirt in rich turquoise because it stood out against his hair, and high-waisted trousers that, while inevitably uncomfortable to ride in, showed off his thighs and, ah, _prized possessions_. It did nice things for the broadness of his shoulders as well. He got a tailored jacket, too, but he didn’t let Hubert talk him into a waistcoat, as he preferred to leave his shirt unbuttoned to mid-breast. Sylvain thought it looked romantic, especially with a baldric for his sheath, which he stripped of its wrappings. There was no need to hide its quality in a city like this.

And, true to promise, Hubert paid for it, placing a bag of gold coins in the assistant’s waiting hand. He ignored Sylvain’s smile, and so Sylvain clapped an arm around his waist, bumping them hip-to-hip, and thanked him profusely.

“Get off me,” Hubert growled, but he seemed at least a little pleased with his own charity. He was much less grouchy with a black coffee in him, too, courtesy the tailor’s assistant. Sylvain chuckled and held on.

“If Edelgard won’t give me money, I’ll just make you take care of me,” Sylvain teased.

“Don’t make me wish I’d left you in the brothel,” Hubert warned.

“Good thing I wasn’t doing sexual favours there,” Sylvain said. “If you’d come in asking for a man and Albert had led you right to me, it would have been real awkward for the both of us.”

“Sylvain,” Hubert said, even more warning. He gestured at the tailor, who was well within earshot. Sylvain just grinned, releasing him from his grip and breezing to the door with a thanks thrown over his shoulder to the tailor. He felt very smart in his new clothes.

The two of them walked from the tailor’s to the palace’s grand foyer. Last time Sylvain had marched through there, the foyer had been eerily empty, just aides rushing in and out like mice trying to avoid being spotted. Now it was bustling, almost to bursting. Large white curtains had been erected on tent poles, sectioning off the foyer into parts. White-robed bishops spoke with the common people, and children streamed between people’s legs. Many parents held babies too small to walk, or sometimes even crawl.

“A new initiative,” Hubert remarked, seeing Sylvain’s curious expression. “For the past six weeks, as well as the six proceeding, physicians will be available to see the children of the poor, free of charge, to assess their health and nutrition.”

“Really,” Sylvain said. That impressed him a little. Half of Faerghus’ graves were for children under five, and it had been that way for much of Sylvain’s life. “What happens after?”

“I don’t quite know yet,” Hubert replied, “but Edelgard has created a new post, Minister of Health and Wellness, and appointed Professor Manuela to ensure there is at least one physician in each district that provides their services without charge, paid for by the state.”

“One for a whole district doesn’t seem like a lot.”

“It isn’t,” Hubert agreed. “But such things take time. We must train more physicians, and we must see if it makes a difference at all.”

Certainly true, Sylvain supposed. He followed Hubert through it all, waving to the occasional child who peered at him, and they waved back. He got a few looks from women, too, and to them he smiled and winked. He delighted in seeing a smile back, especially from women who wouldn't have given him a second glance in peasant's garb. All dressed up again, he was pleased to discover he still had an effortless charm.

They took the tall stairs up to the second level, but instead of going to the throne room, they turned left and took a long hall into the many offices of the former-Imperial government. Sylvain got many curious looks as he passed through. While he was no doubt recognized by at least a few of them, he preferred to believe his Northern good looks stood out dramatically against the features of the Adrestian peoples. He certainly thought he looked twice as good next to Hubert, who Sylvain assumed could only ever aspire to being attractive within a specific niche. Still, just as much attention went to Hubert, with people bowing their heads as he passed, and sometimes stopping to shake his hand in greeting without acknowledging Sylvain at all. His pride chafed, but his own reaction annoyed him just as much.

As much pride as he took in himself, just this one afternoon in Enbarr had already made the past few years of his life seem as pretend as Charmaine had accused them of being. If all it took to restore his arrogance was to be called by his name and dressed in finely woven wools and silks, then it seemed there was no hope for any part of him. His ego, his morals, his loyalties.

It all felt dangerous.

He had to get some money and get out.

At the end of the hall, an attendant opened one of the double doors and let them pass. The door closed behind them as soon as they crossed the threshold, and it made Sylvain glance over his shoulder as though they had been trapped. They were here. It felt like at least half of his courage had been left on the other side of the door.

The office belonged to Edelgard; even if he wasn’t told where he was going, or if she wasn’t here herself, he might have guessed within moments. The grand carved-wood desk was stacked high with documents, and the wall behind it was draped in a massive tapestry, easily as tall as two grown men. The double-headed eagle of the Adrestian Empire loomed over them. (It occurred to Sylvain that it was the first Adrestian eagle he'd seen all day.) Edelgard wasn’t alone, either; she stood by the window, talking quietly with Ferdinand von Aegir, who cast them both a look and a brief smile before returning his attention back to Edelgard.

Hubert waited, and so did Sylvain, though with a growing unease. Edelgard continued to speak with Ferdinand for a moment, their conversation beyond Sylvain’s understanding without context but seeming to center around the definition of “literacy”. Then, finally, she glanced aside at them.

Her lavender eyes pierced Sylvain to the core. It felt at once like she saw right through him, and then she looked back to Ferdinand to say her good-byes.

“Sylvain Jose Gautier!” Ferdinand said when Edelgard had finished with him, pleasantly surprised but with a layer of something else Sylvain couldn’t quite place. He looked Sylvain over, and seemingly impressed, he said: “I did not know you were returning to us. Where have you been these past few years?”

“A brothel,” Sylvain said.

Ferdinand went pink immediately, and suddenly his tongue seemed like dead weight in his mouth. He fumbled over formulating an answer, especially fixed with Sylvain’s easy smile and casual stance, and then he finally managed: “Well! That is quite some time to be.... well... I hope you... enjoyed... yourself?”

Edelgard sighed, momentarily touching a hand to her temple. Sylvain felt Hubert boring holes in the side of his head with his gaze alone, and so he just replied: “Lots of fun. Here I am now, though. We should catch up later.”

“Of course,” Ferdinand said. He glanced to Edelgard and stepped into one of those low, handsome bows, his fine cape splaying out on the nice floors, and then he excused himself.

Sylvain expected to be greeted immediately, but instead he watched Edelgard and Hubert have a conversation in just a glance. It was clearly about him, and if he were a literal dog rather than a figurative one, that alone could have gotten his hackles up. Hubert’s cool look said _guess what? He’s everything we suspected! _Edelgard’s gaze replied _you’re right; how funny that we invited him here just to show him how embarrassing he is!_

The moment the door closed behind Ferdinand, Edelgard turned her piercing gaze back to Sylvain, but it softened, just slightly. Sylvain didn’t feel any more at ease for it, but he smiled tersely. Sometimes, when looking at Edelgard, Sylvain felt the inexplicable urge to muss her up. Her pristine rolled hair, her polished tiaras, her cleanly tailored and pressed clothes — it just filled him with some desire to put her on a bucking pony and send her careening through a muddy field until she shrieked and screamed, and hopefully the whole affair would loosen her up a little. Her reserved little gestures, her maddening ability to point out people’s flaws while never revealing her own, her bizarre daintiness that completely belied her ability to cleave a grown man in two with an axe.

He didn’t understand how she made it all seem so effortless when he could barely lace his boots in the morning without inviting criticism. It made him feel like she was privy to some secret, some joy or happiness that he’d been denied.

Sylvain couldn’t stand being there, and yet all he could do was pluck up his courage and act like he owned the room himself.

“Teasing Ferdinand like that... you really haven’t changed, have you?” she asked. “But you seem happier. Are you happy, Sylvain?”

_Happier._ She might as well have punched him to the floor.

“I was until yesterday,” he said. She gave him no reaction save for the slightest furrowing of her brow, but he felt that honesty was always the best policy with a woman like Edelgard. Lying to her was an instant way to lose what was left of her respect, and Sylvain had lost enough of that for a lifetime. He carried on: “I just didn’t appreciate Hubert here coming in and blowing my cover. I only came because he forced my hand.” 

“Hubert,” Edelgard said, mildly scolding.

“I did what had to be done,” he replied.

“Well, you have my apologies, Sylvain,” Edelgard replied. “If it wasn’t deeply important to me, I wouldn’t have disturbed you at all. Even so, I told Hubert that he wasn’t to create a scene.”

She sighed.

“My apologies, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert said. “But I knew leaving him there wouldn't serve you.”

Sylvain looked between them. Edelgard gave Hubert a deeply unimpressed look, and despite her rather small stature, her command of the room made Sylvain nervous. That feeling redoubled upon itself when she looked back to him. He got the impression that she pitied him, and somehow that felt worse than being despised.

He was supposed to seem put-together, untouchable — a nobleman who could stand toe to toe with her. Maybe he was out of practice.

“I appreciate your patience with this matter, Sylvain,” Edelgard said, finally, relenting. And then: “I’m sure you’re wondering what is so important that I would summon you here.”

“I am." 

“Why don’t you take a seat?” Edelgard asked, gesturing at one of the thickly stuffed armchairs in the corner of her office.

Sylvain didn’t feel particularly inclined to, but he did so anyway, and she sat across from him. The broad chair seemed to swallow her up, and the axe mounted on the wall over her head loomed so obviously that he couldn’t help but be reminded of her prowess with it. He thought, sometimes, that he would be a dead man if he hadn’t changed houses at nineteen, because no matter how hard he trained, Edelgard was the sort of person who had trained that much more.

He watched her arrange her skirts over her knees and lift her chin, the elegant golden horns of her headdress framing her sleek face. Sylvain looked at her, looked at the axe, and thought about his own neck. _No_, Sylvain thought. His heart rebelled. He didn’t think he could work for her. Not a chance. He’d rather be penniless.

“Last time we spoke, you promised to release me from your service,” Sylvain said. “Which you did. I’m not in your service anymore, Your Majesty. I just came to ask for money.”

“You have no right to make demands of her,” Hubert interjected. “Last time, you—“

He stopped himself. Perhaps he knew he had overstepped, but that had been the closest to an outburst Sylvain had ever seen in him, and it alarmed him. Had Hubert just spent the past few days simmering in resentment towards him? He wondered if he should leave before it all got worse, but thought that Edelgard wouldn’t let him get that far. He swallowed the lump in his throat and told himself to stay calm. 

“Hubert, I think I would like some tea,” Edelgard replied, firmly. Hubert nodded curtly and excused himself. Sylvain was surprised to see Edelgard roll her eyes the moment the door settled back into its frame. He didn't think he'd ever seen that happen before. She continued: “I do recall that, Sylvain. But I ask you to listen. This is more of a favour, and I thought it would be something that would interest you.”

“Well, favours still cost money, in my books,” Sylvain replied. “Sorry, I don’t mean to nickel and dime an old friend, but Hubert lost me my job. I need money.” 

“I understand,” Edelgard said. “And I’m happy to provide you with funding for any supplies you might need, as well as compensate you for your time and effort once the job is complete. But I hoped this would be of personal interest to you...”

And there he was, curious despite his fear— Sylvain wasn’t sure if he wanted it, or if he was just a sucker for a beautiful woman making requests of him. Or, worst of all for him, if he was just that desperate for money. 

“Okay,” he replied. “What’s the job?”

“I need you to reconnect with Felix,” Edelgard said, and Sylvain felt himself awash with surprise. “I would like you to find him and bring him to me so that I might speak with him.”

Felix.

Sylvain hadn’t seen him in some years, and though his heart twisted at the idea, it also refused to hope. Felix was even less likely than him to work with Edelgard again, and even then, finding him could take weeks, or months, or even years. Sylvain was never a man hunter, after all. He could imagine no way to hunt down a man living in this very city, let alone a man out in the world who had no desire to be found. Sylvain didn't even know if Felix had stayed in Fódlan.

“I have no idea where he is,” Sylvain admitted.

“I do,” she said. Of course she did; she’d known where he was, after all, and Sylvain suddenly doubted he’d ever escaped her reach. “About a year ago, he was running a band of mercenaries in the Oghma mountains, just south of the border with the former Kingdom. We think he has split from them and has been patrolling that road alone. It’s a good time to approach him.”

“I... don’t know if you’re going to have any luck there,” Sylvain said, as delicately as he could. “Lady Edelgard, if you need a talented swordsman, I’m sure there’s someone else, people much closer to home. And if it’s something to do with politics, you’re not going to get any insight out of him that you couldn’t get from anyone else, or like... Ingrid, or someone.”

“I don’t need a sword nor a politician,” Edelgard said. 

"Then why?"

“My reasons are my own,” she said. “But it is important. I will not give you money, but you will be well compensated; perhaps with the return of your lands, though it would be with a steward of my choosing.”

“I just want money,” he replied, bluntly.

“Are you not even interested in seeing how they are?” Edelgard asked. He didn’t like how delicate she sounded, how specific. “I had hoped you would be ready to at least entertain the idea. You were very upset when you sold them.”

“No,” Sylvain replied, blunter still. “I knew what I was doing when I sold them. I made the right choice. If I do this for you, I just want gold coin.”

She frowned.

“Well, I’m not paying you in coin,” she repeated. “Not if your intentions are to spend it on brothels and booze.”

“I’m not going to spend it on brothels and booze,” Sylvain replied, sharply. “Actually, I’m a little offended that you think that’s what I do with my money.”

Edelgard raised an eyebrow. Sylvain didn’t like how little she believed in him. He carried on, voice growing terse:

“And even if I did, what exactly is wrong with that? I don’t think you know much about brothels, Edelgard, but those women aren’t generally very well-off. If I spent money there, I'd be giving them a living.”

“If I am to assume that you would only spend it on responsible things,” Edelgard interjected, crisply. “Then in return, I’ll ask you not to pretend that you’ve been gallivanting around brothels as a great act of charity, or that you have been living in them for purely altruistic reasons.”

He felt like a rabbit in a snare. Words spilled out of him: “Well, sweetheart, I’m—“

“Edelgard.”

“Well, _Edelgard_, I’m sorry I’m not honest or good or living my life the way _you_ think I should,” Sylvain said. “But it's _my_ life, and my point is, if you’re hiring me to do anything for you, it’s not really your business whether I turn around and donate it to disenfranchised women or if I blow it all on rum and whores!”

She was looking at him as though he’d crossed some very serious lines with her, so he let his voice dwindle to nothing. Edelgard's gaze clearly asked if he was finished with whatever stupid thought was floating through his head, and Sylvain chose to clear his throat, sit back in his seat, and pretend all was right.

“If you’re finished,” she said, with a gossamer-thin layer of patience left. “I cannot spend money on your services if you are going to use it irresponsibly. Fódlan’s people demand transparency, and we must be thorough in the examples we set." 

“I find it insane that you’re worried about how responsible I am with money but also want me to take up my lands again.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“My _former_ lands,” he corrected, but the damage had been done. He continued: “I keep having to repeat myself on this, but I had a pretty good thing going just now, I was living honestly, I was working hard, and then Hubert — _and you_ — came along and took that from me. I think you _owe_ me. You should give me money without asking for anything in return.”

“Sylvain,” Edelgard said, a sigh just behind her voice. “If a mere inquiry into your location could ruin you, perhaps you weren’t doing as well as you thought.”

“It was fine.”

But it had barely been a day and he was already starting to forget why he was in the brothel in the first place, or why he thought it was so good. Didn’t he spend all that time convincing himself he was an asshole, or a horrible person? Hadn’t it been an indictment of his worst vices, the kind of place that encouraged him to drink heavily and make excuses for his irresponsible conduct with women?

Wasn’t he trying to fix that? When did he _stop_ trying to fix that?

She reached across the void between them. The gesture felt monumental, and so Sylvain reluctantly gave her his hand, and she took it between both of hers. She wore white gloves. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched them. She wasn’t ever a particularly affectionate person.

“Would I be responsible for the water in your shoes just because it was I who pointed out the hole in your sole?” Edelgard asked, earnestly.

“No,” he said.

“Then you must trust me,” Edelgard replied. “As you once did. Or, as I hope, you still do. Do you trust me, Sylvain?”

He looked her straight in the eye and found her earnest. He thought back to the first time they had sat together in private, and how she had seemed remarkably engaged and compassionate, and not at all the frigid and aloof girl he’d seen around the monastery. As a boy, he’d fancied the idea that she was opening up to him — and him alone — in the seclusion of a one-on-one encounter. As a man, he knew she was doing something not just for herself, but confusingly, for him too.

The problem now, as it was then, is that he didn’t quite know why.

“Listen,” Edelgard said. “If you _don’t_ trust me, I understand. We did not part under ideal circumstances, and I apologize for my part in that. But please know that I still think you have great potential, as I always have, and it frustrates me to think you would squander it.”

Hubert had said that too, sort of, but Hubert had focused on how Sylvain had insulted Edelgard by squandering his potential, rather than insulting himself. Edelgard waited for Sylvain to string together a counter-point, but he couldn’t. He could only shake his head, mouth trying to form words his brain hadn’t even planned yet.

“Edelgard,” he said, finally. “Please. Potential for _what?_”

She knitted her eyebrows at him.

“For what?” she repeated. “Sylvain. I don’t understand why you continue on like this, or why you insist on being dismissed as an idiot. You’re one of the most intelligent and resilient men I’ve ever known, and yet you insist on these hypocrisies, in living your life in a way that will only end in people remembering you as a heavy-drinking, womanizing fool, if they remember you at all.”

Sylvain couldn’t look at her anymore. He pulled his hand from hers and looked off to the side for a moment, his voice caught in his throat, and he shook his head.

“I don’t want anyone to remember me for what I did,” Sylvain said.

“You helped end a war,” Edelgard reminded him.

“I know,” he said. “And if you want the credit, you can have it.”

He stood up. Edelgard looked up at him, a frown on her face and her hands poised lightly on the armrests, as if ready to stand up after him. He shook his head at her. He didn’t want to hear any more, and he didn’t want to have to rationalize any of it.

“Thanks for the offer,” Sylvain said, “but...”

“Think about it,” Edelgard said, firmly. “You can stay here tonight, or as long as you like. I could even assist you in finding work in the city, something more suited to your skills. But I thinking reconnecting with Felix would serve you just as much as it would serve me.”

Sylvain nodded.

“I'll stay for a bit," he relented.

It felt futile to resist. Even laying lodging and a full belly aside, sooner or later, Edelgard accomplished whatever she wanted, and she was going to find Felix with or without him. Sylvain knew that well enough, but thinking about Felix, he wondered if it really could be such a bad thing to see his beloved friend again. It would be painful, certainly, but if he did it...

Sylvain bowed curtly, turned on his heel and walked out before he could crumble and agree.

He needed fresh air.


	5. The Man You Wanted To Be

There was little better in the world than a good lazy afternoon, and Sylvain, being the lay-about sort when he could afford to be, partook whenever he could.

On that particular day, much of the monastery was quiet. The knights were attending to some miserable church business somewhere, and many of the new students of the Officer's Academy were still on the road to their new home, or else setting up their new dormitory rooms. Sylvain had made it his business to introduce himself to every girl that arrived, but he had already been roped into helping several of them move in, and he needed a break. As such, he had fashioned himself a nice little lounge chair out of burlap sacks of grain, right by the docks where he could people-watch and doze at his leisure. With the afternoon breeze and no authority in sight to scold him, Sylvain felt it was going to be an incredible year. He was_ free._

Until, of course, Felix arrived and nudged him in the ribs with his foot.

Sylvain jumped, yowling his surprise, and he nearly rolled off his sack of grain and into the water.

“Are you _napping?_” Felix asked. “You slept in, too.”

“Yes,” Sylvain protested. “It's a free day. What else are you supposed to do on a free day? Classes don't start for another two weeks…”

“I was up at six to train,” Felix said.

“Well, of course _you_ were,” Sylvain replied, laughing, and he swung his legs down so Felix could sit. Felix did exactly that, bumping shoulder to shoulder with him. He was eating an apple, and a bit of juice dribbled down his chin as he bit into it. Sylvain elbowed him, and Felix gave him a look. Sylvain opened his hand, and Felix sighed and handed him the apple. Sylvain bit into it too. It was sweet. Around a mouthful, Sylvain added: “When are you not training?”

“Right now,” Felix replied, with a smirk.

“Well, fucking obviously, not right now,” Sylvain repeated back. “Why aren’t you training _now_?”

“Didn’t feel like it,” he said. “It’s a nice afternoon. We don’t get those much.”

“Especially not back home, huh?” Sylvain remarked. Felix nodded. For a moment the two of them sat in relative silence, listening to the water lapping up against the docks and the birds flitting in and out of the gaps in the roof. “Yeesh. If we were back in Fhirdiad right now, we’d be wearing two layers of cloaks, with fur linings to boot. I wouldn’t be within a hundred yards of the water, it’d be even colder.”

He spied Felix eyeing his apple, and despite being tempted to keep on eating it, he passed it back. Felix was funny like that sometimes; if you held something away from him, he would never ask for it. He would just stare at you pointedly, like a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of its hole, and then snatch it back the moment you left your guard down. (Sometimes Sylvain did it for fun.)

“I miss the cold,” Felix said. “I hate the weather here. It changes so much and so fast, at least back home you know whether you’re going to need a coat in the morning.”

“Yeah, that could get tiresome,” Sylvain agreed, but then he spied something across the docks. “But it has one serious perk.”

“Which is?”

Sylvain leaned in close to Felix, so close that their temples bumped together, and with one finger outstretched he pointed at a couple girls sitting on the wooden fishing dock, making sure that Felix’s eyes followed the same path as his. The girls were talking, too softly for their voices to carry over the water, but that wasn’t Sylvain’s business. What he was pointing out, of course, was the girls wearing their shirts unbuttoned as far as dress code would allow, each revealing the gentle curve of their breasts.

“Tell me you see that,” Sylvain said, when Felix had no reaction.

“See what?” Felix asked.

“Their shirts, man,” Sylvain said, almost urgently. “Look. That one’s close to popping. If she inhaled suddenly, that top button would fly across the pond and kill me instantly, and I’d _welcome_ it.”

Felix wiggled away from his grip and fixed him with a scornful look.

“Do you think of nothing else?” he admonished. “You wear your shirt unbuttoned like that all the time.”

“Yeah, but I’m a man,” Sylvain said, getting a little impatient. “And...”

“You’re a pig, is what you are,” said Ingrid, somewhere behind him. Sylvain craned his neck to look at her, and she prompted him: “Well? And what?”

“I like seeing their tits,” he said.

Saying something like that in Fhirdiad might have gotten him scolded within an inch of his life, but here in Garreg Mach, the only consequence was that Ingrid mimed beating him over the head with the book in her hand. It felt fun to say something so crude, the kind of thing a nobleman shouldn't ever let cross his mind, let alone his lips. _Tits._

“I swear,” she said, “you are incorrigible.”

“I want that in a title someday,” Sylvain declared. “Sylvain Jose Gautier the Incorrigible.”

Ingrid sighed. She gestured for them both to move over, and Sylvain did so. Felix didn’t, but he was forced to when Sylvain jostled him enough. The three of them crammed together on that great big sack of grain.

“What have you been up to this fine day, Ingrid?” Sylvain asked. "Wasting your hours away like the rest of us, perchance?"

“Reading,” she said. “It’s been so nice and quiet, I just laid in the grass by the gazebo and read for a few hours.”

“What about?”

“Your house, actually,” Ingrid replied.

“Pfft,” Sylvain snorted. “What _specifically?_”

“Its origins! When Gautier’s uncle was slaughtered by a young vassal of his state, Bernier, Gautier wanted to meet him in war. It escalated so quickly that they were forced by their kin to go before Saint Seiros, and Seiros, a great mediator, urged them to turn the energy of their hatred towards forgiveness.”

“Heard it before, still boring, don’t explain more,” Sylvain replied. He paused. “Do you figure his name was something Gautier, or Gautier something? I always wondered how history forgot about that bit.”

“I... don’t know,” Ingrid said. She paused next. “Or maybe his name was Gautier Gautier?”

“Yikes. Sounds better than Fraldarius Fraldarius, though," Sylvain said. "Galatea Galatea."

Felix pitched the apple core into the water. It hit with a great splash, turning heads momentarily across the docks, and then vanished before the water could settle. Sylvain thought he saw a large fish scoop it up, but his imagination was always vivid.

“What was the result?” Felix asked. Sylvain knew in his very soul that Felix already knew the answer, but Ingrid loved nothing more than to talk about her interests, even if she knew perfectly well that they _already_ knew, sometimes even better than she did.

Ingrid, delighted to be indulged, smiled and clasped the book to her chest.

“Bernier stripped himself shirtless and begged for Gautier’s mercy, declaring how much he regretted his mistake in killing Guerri. When it seemed Gautier would never yield, raining down blow after blow upon Bernier’s sword, Saint Seiros said that the war had gone on too long, and that Gautier should hear Bernier’s plea of good will. If he could yield, his own sins would be forgiven, too, and they could be reconciled.”

“Lame,” Sylvain replied.

“It wasn’t,” Ingrid insisted. “All of court took up the shout for Gautier to spare not only Bernier, but to learn compassion and forgiveness, for all of their sakes. And Gautier raised Bernier to his feet, crying out, and they embraced as true friends.”

“I stand corrected,” Sylvain replied. “_Very_ lame.”

“He should have killed him,” Felix said, almost sagely. “That’s just not realistic.”

“What!” Ingrid yelped, in disbelief. “No, no, he shouldn’t have — it goes against the whole point of the story, and a change in our history... a long time ago, that kind of thing was normal. Is it really so strange to think that people could forgive and undo the grief they had caused?”

“Forgiving someone doesn’t undo murder,” Sylvain replied. “Bernier killed Gautier’s uncle.”

“But think about the amount of hate he would have spread if he didn’t,” Ingrid insisted. “It wasn’t naive optimism, it was a reminder that they had to restore their bonds, and make stronger oaths of fidelity to each other, because they had responsibilities towards their vassals, to keep the peace, to maintain unity...”

Her passion was clear, but her voice trailed. Maybe she sensed she was losing both boys, who looked at her with mixed reactions, Sylvain amused and Felix disbelieving.

“Don’t you think the world would be better if it was like that, though?” Ingrid asked.

“Yes, but it’s not going to be like that,” Felix said. “Maybe long ago, people could tangle their feelings with concerns of the realm, but it all just sounds like a fairytale to me, and a bad one at that. You’re not going to get very far as a knight if you expect anyone to act anything like that, Ingrid.”

Ingrid sighed. Sylvain could see she had already given up convincing them of anything, and that she probably wouldn’t broach the subject with them for at least a few weeks, lest they make fun of her again. It felt mildly unfair to put her in that position, as Sylvain could see her side of it just as much as he could see Felix’s, but at the same time, he didn’t like having his family history explained to him. (It was also a little funny to see her so flustered about it all.)

“Never mind,” Ingrid sighed, setting her book aside. She settled in more comfortably on the grain bag, her hip digging into Sylvain’s, which he was sure was deliberate. He paid it no heed, as he didn’t mind her snuggled up close any more than he minded Felix on his other side. He flashed her a smile and she rolled her eyes at him, but then she smiled too.

Ingrid was easy, fortunately. Maybe not in the ways Sylvain usually described girls as easy, but certainly easy to get along with. They had been friends since they were little, after all, and Felix, too.

For a few moments, the three of them sat in silence, huddled together. Then, as if realizing just how comfortable he was getting, Felix shifted away, choosing to stand instead. Sylvain glanced at him and got no look in return. He wanted them all to hang out, and it seemed like Felix might just leave.

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “Do you think we could swim in there?”

“I suppose we could if _either_ of us knew how to swim,” Felix replied.

“Okay, well, maybe not swim,” Sylvain said. “But it’s warm enough, I’m thinking maybe I’ll stick my feet in. Could be nice.”

“I won’t,” Felix replied. “There’s a lot of fish in there. Did you see how one went after my apple?”

So he had, but Sylvain laughed.

“Oh, you’re afraid of fish?” he asked.

“No,” Felix replied, curtly. “I’m not afraid—“

“You’re afraid,” Sylvain repeated. He sat forward on the sack, reaching to grasp his boot and pry it off his foot. It took a fair bit of effort, as they were his new uniform boots and not yet broken in fully, but when it came, he tossed it aside and went for the other.

“I’m not afraid of fish,” Felix said, knowing full-well that repeating it wouldn’t deter Sylvain for an instant. He watched Sylvain remove his other boot and glanced aside at the water, as if expecting some large, wriggling silver fish to spy Sylvain’s bare toes and jump out right there.

“Sure,” Sylvain said. “I believe you.”

Felix made an annoyed sound at the back of his throat. Sylvain just smiled and started rolling up the cuffs of his pants. Ingrid laughed, stooping to take off her boots as well.

“Ahh, see, Ingrid’s not a coward,” Sylvain said.

“Turn around, no peeking,” Ingrid ordered him, but she hitched up her skirt to loose her stockings before Sylvain even got a chance. He turned around anyway, but whatever –– he knew what it looked like to watch a girl unlace her stockings from her garters. It’s not like she was lifting her skirt up that high, either.

“Ingrid, you are practically a _man_ to me,” Sylvain informed her as he sat down at the dock’s edge. “I don’t want to look at your drawers any more than I want to see Dimitri’s.”

“Gee, thanks, Sylvain,” Ingrid said, breezily, and she sat at his side, her stockings balled up in her hand.

Sylvain let his feet skim the water. It was much colder than expected but it wasn’t about to deter him, especially not with the weather so crisp, so he plunged them in to get it over with, and then he sighed, happily. Ingrid did the same, letting out a little squeak when she first touched her toes to the water.

For a moment, all three were quiet, Sylvain and Ingrid gently kicking their feet and sending little whirlpools twisting around their ankles, Felix standing over them, looking out across the water with the faintest smile on his face.

“You know, this is going to be a great year,” Sylvain declared. "I just know it."

Sylvain woke up with the sun on his face, and for a few, semi-delirious moments, he kept his eyes closed, pondering how comfortable he was. His bed felt so plush it might swallow him, and when he sleepily rolled over and found himself without someone to pull into a good snuggle, he shoved part of the duvet under him instead. He felt cozy. Not particularly rested, but cozy.

He opened his eyes for a second, and finding it much too bright, he groaned and screwed them closed again. He certainly wasn't in a dark stable, and his duvet was not a stiff and unyielding pallet of straw.

_Oh yeah_, he thought. _I’m back in Enbarr_.

He certainly didn’t have a featherbed at the brothel. But despite how comfortable the bed was, it didn’t make him feel any more rested, and Sylvain found himself cringing. He didn’t quite remember how he had gotten there, but he had some vague memory of being shown to a room and then collapsing. If he weren’t stripped naked, he might have assumed Hubert had _collected_ him after all, mugging him as he stepped out of Edelgard’s office.

“Are you finally awake?” a high, pleasant voice asked him. 

_Oh_. Maybe he wasn’t alone after all.

Sylvain turned his head, lifting himself up on an elbow. He found himself gazing at a cute household maid. He looked just in time to see her gaze flit from his bare ass to his face, a little smile alighted on her lips. As far as Sylvain was concerned, that was a good sign. She held a carafe in one hand and an empty glass in the other, which was an even better sign: she was going to take care of him.

“I’m awake,” he said. He rolled over, dragging the sheet over his lower half as he did so — he got to see her momentary alarm anyway, and her giggle of relief. He grinned despite the throbbing in his head, and he reached up and scrubbed a hand through his hair, just to make sure it was attractively tousled. “I can pretend not to be if you wanted to get a longer look, though.”

“I think I saw enough,” she said.

“Well, if you change your mind, the offer’s always open.”

“Marquis Vestra warned me about you,” she said. “He said you like servant girls.”

He supposed he _shouldn’t_ tease the serving girls if Hubert was actively trying to keep them out of his bed; they lived in the same precarious situation that he had just found himself in, ever-subject to the whims of the lords that passed through their lives. But at the same time, Sylvain figured that if Hubert was going to interfere, then it was really more of a _challenge_ being laid down, and he could argue a case for any girl who happened to stray for him.

(Sylvain knew he was going to burn in eternal flames when he died.)

“Did he now?” Sylvain replied, sitting up on the edge of the bed. His whole body ached as he did so, apparently a little more saddle-sore than he thought, but he stretched in front of her like he was putting on a show, the sheet just barely dragged across his lap. He watched her gaze dip down to the trail of hair reaching up to his navel. She bit her lower lip momentarily, and he decided she was basically the perfect person to stroll into his room that morning. “Must not have scared you much, seeing as you came here anyway.”

“I’m not scared at all,” she told him, and she gestured with the carafe, asking a silent question. He nodded and she poured him a glass of water, and when she held it out to him, he didn’t budge. He just waited, hand barely out, and she finally sighed and brought it right to him.

He grinned as he took it, and she looked at him like she was already in love with his bullshit. He put a hand on her thigh, just lower than the hem of her skirt, and brought the glass to his lips. He felt so parched he drained half of it in one go, without taking his eyes off her for a moment. She held his gaze confidently, standing _just_ between his spread knees, and that coquettish look in her eyes got his blood pumping. That was just the sort of thing to wake him up.

He bet to himself that she’d be going down on him in no time.

“What’s your name?” he asked, running that hand down to her knee and then back up again, settling higher than it had started. The sheet across his lap wasn't going to be hiding him for long.

“Jasmine,” she said.

“Jasmine,” he repeated. This close, he could see her dimples, and the flecks of honey brown in her green eyes. She smiled, letting him shift into her space as he took another sip. “I’m Sylvain. Why don’t you relax with me for a bit? If Hubert asks what held you up, I’ll tell him you did a _really_ thorough clean of the room.”

She grinned, eyes dropping to her feet (and his groin!) for the briefest of moments, and Sylvain knew he had her. He set the glass aside on the night table so he could pull her into his lap with both hands.

But Jasmine pulled away, collapsing into giggles. Sylvain could only sit there smiling vapidly as she laughed her pretty little head off. He felt foolish, but thought he could maybe salvage the situation until she said:

“Sorry! Marquis Vestra said you’d try to sleep with me, too, and it made me so curious! And you’re so cute, just look at you. _Almost _convinced me.”

She looked him up and down again, taking her sweet, sweet time. Sylvain might have relished it if he wasn’t so annoyed.

Sylvain decided that Hubert was a dead man.

“Cute is a new one,” was all he could say. He didn’t feel like dressing, so he just lingered there, figuring if she wasn’t going to play with him, at the very least he could get a kick out of hanging out in Edelgard’s palace naked. “You can go on thinking I’m cute, because you’re going to see a whole lot of me in this room.”

“I don’t really care what you do in your room,” she said.

His room? To call them his felt like a bit of a stretch, but he supposed she wasn’t wrong. While the guest quarters held several near-identical rooms, he knew these were his because of the view out the open windows. The sun was setting, casting an orange glow over the city. Though the landscape had changed a little, he knew the angle. It was the same room he’d had when he’d lived in Enbarr after the war.

He had tumbled many, _many_ maids in this room. Too bad for Jasmine if she didn’t want to join their illustrious ranks.

She smiled, gesturing for him to get up. He did, letting the sheet fall, and she didn’t even bat an eye. His entire body protested at being vertical, but he watched her set about making the bed, smoothing the sheets until they laid perfectly flat before covering it all up with the plush duvet. His clothes were already laid out neatly over the back of a chair, no doubt folded while he’d still been sleeping. (He wouldn’t put it past himself to have just dropped them all over the floor.)

“Is it still, uh, today?”

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose, but it's not the day you arrived,” she said. Ah, shit, that was right. After speaking with Edelgard, he'd been out late carousing and seeing the city. "You’ve missed lunch, but you have dinner with Marquis Vestra and the Emperor in three hours. Would you like me to draw you a bath?”

“Are you saying I smell, Jasmine?” he asked.

Jasmine crinkled her nose at him. 

“Not at all, if you don’t mind smelling like _that_,” she said. “I’ll draw one with the nice salts, the ones that make your skin soft, and then you can dress for dinner.”

(Sylvain decided he was going to kill Hubert for obviously hand-picking the girl who would condemn him to furiously tugging on himself the moment he was alone. Was she going to be here on and off every day for the _entire time_ he stayed in the Imperial Palace? He was going to have to seduce her or else perish.)

“A bath it is, then,” he said. He sat down on the freshly made bed to wait, and he stretched out, rolling his shoulders before settling his hands behind his head, watching her the whole time. Usually, girls couldn't take their eyes off him when he lounged like that, but Jasmine just laughed and walked away. Damn. He had to get in better shape.

She had a great wooden tub brought into the room by other household staff, and the lot of them began the procession of carrying great vases of hot water from beyond the doors of his room. Before they began pouring them in, Jasmine draped a fresh white sheet in the tub, promising Sylvain that he wouldn’t get any slivers in his “cute” butt.

“Better not,” he said. “If I do, you’re going to be the one to pull them out, gorgeous.”

She laughed at that, too, of course, even as she liberally sprinkled the water with perfumed salts and some little bottles of this and that. Sylvain made his way into the tub after that, sinking into the hot water with his mouth open in a silent yell, the heat rushing up his body and then acclimatizing just as fast. Once in, he felt a comfort settle into his bones that he’d thoroughly missed. He hadn’t had a bath like this in years, and in the past six weeks in particular, he’d been consigned to furiously scrubbing himself with a wet cloth every other day, as the tub was used by the clients only. It felt so good it was almost obscene to not only have a bath, but to have a bath of his very own. It even felt like he might kick his headache in no time.

He couldn't believe how happy he felt.

"Do you need anything else?" Jasmine asked him.

"My shoulders are so tight," he said. He smirked, lifting his chin and giving her eyes that said _come in here._ He lounged against the back edge of the tub, arms laid over the sides. _Come on. Come on!_

"I can call a physician for you, if you'd like," Jasmine offered. She smiled, but she lingered on the other side of the tub. She leaned against the edge of it, out of his reach but in a way that her skirt caught against the edge and exposed a few extra inches of thigh. Sylvain had to admit she was good — drawing him in but never quite letting him get to her.

It was a little strange, actually.

And then:

“Wait,” he said, and Jasmine tilted her head, her long ponytail falling over her shoulder. He narrowed his eyes and started gesturing. “New clothes, featherbed, hot bath, pretty girl.” He pointed at her last. “Is this... all some ploy to get me to stay? To think about how good I could have it?”

Jasmine smiled.

“To be fair, you really did smell.”

Sylvain flicked water at her, and she just laughed and walked away. He decided not to hold it against her. He didn’t mind girls who played him — it showed character, and reminded him where he stood in the world. Of all the people who could have walked in and seen his ass and then made an ass out of him, he was glad it was a pretty girl, at least. And she was real pretty too, the kind of effortless pretty with long, sleek hair and long, dark eyelashes.

A thought popped into his head, fully-formed and impossible to ignore:_ Felix would scoff if he saw this. Hubert’s fucking with you and you just think about girls?_

His smile faded a little around the corners. He thought about how Felix would rag on him for forgetting his principles, going on about his responsibilities and the foolishness of the nobility, and then being seduced by some luxuries anyway. Had he really changed since he was a boy? Probably not, he decided. He’d just gotten worse.

That felt worse than anything.

Sylvain didn’t know what to do, but he felt a deep, ugly impulse to run. He could run where no one could find him: not Edelgard, not Hubert, not Felix, not Ingrid, not Dimitri. He could live out his days, labouring for what little he deserved, and someday die, buried in an unmarked grave where no one would remember him or the things he'd done.

And there, maybe, he’d be at peace.

Sylvain sunk into the water as far as he could, down to his chin.

_Get it together._

He elected to not go to dinner.

It was, selfishly, a hard decision. He never had any love for the rigorous etiquette, or the stuffy practice of dressing for dinner, or the almost-mandatory pre- and post-dinner socializing with that many more drinks and sometimes cigars and inevitable questions about where he’d been and what he’d been doing… but he did truly enjoy the food in Enbarr. He loved the food in Enbarr so much that it felt like hacking off a limb to not show up to dinner, leaving a plate of some delicacy untouched while he guzzled beer and salted fried chicken in the market. He did not suffer much the idea that Hubert and Edelgard would be disappointed with him; rather, he could imagine Hubert consoling Edelgard, in that particular way of his, that Sylvain would come around.

Sylvain wasn’t yet sure if he would, and he certainly didn’t feel like navigating hours of conversational barbs designed to convince him to take the work. It was hard to make a choice for yourself with someone spoon-feeding you bait the entire time.

But the more he thought about it, the more he _knew_ he needed money. For all the shitty things he had done in his life, not making good on his debts would probably be the shittiest. He had to make money somehow, and Edelgard really was the fastest way. There wasn’t any way around it. He had to convince her to pay him cash or else he'd be actively ruining lives.

But, he thought, as he meandered the streets of the capital city: he was already a bad person.

Sylvain sometimes thought about his youth, when he felt like he had a lifetime to become a better person. Back then, he thought everyone was as bad as him, whether they showed it or not. What made a man a bad man, anyway? But as he'd grown older, he'd realized he wasn’t like Felix, who had a fierce, unshakeable code of ethics and sorted all of his deeds into the appropriate mental boxes in order to move on with his life. He also wasn't like Dimitri, who had possessed a moral constitution so fragile that he alternated wringing his hands with wringing others’ necks, but stood by whatever he felt at the time with wild abandon. Sylvain’s own approach had just felt aimless, dispassionate. He didn’t make an effort. He often did whatever was easiest, and worse, he didn't even think before putting himself first.

Now, he thought that made him worse than either of them. At least they endeavored to have a code of ethics, and they committed to it and fought for it. Dimitri had died unrepentant, and Sylvain was sure Felix would be the same, if he hadn’t already. They died like _men_. He, Sylvain Jose Gautier, simply created strife wherever he went and then strolled away, asking some flippant question: _what else could have been done? Is there a point feeling bad about it? What did it matter?_

As long as he ended most days with a girl in his arms and a drink in one hand, he could say he was getting by fine. Damn everyone else, let them solve their own problems for once. Why did he have to be responsible for anything? Why the fuck couldn’t Edelgard go get Felix herself, if she knew so much? They all seemed to be doing just fine without him, revolutionizing cities and uniting kingdoms and all of that — why _couldn’t_ they just let him live in a haze? They didn’t _need_ him.

But the lack of meaning in his life ate at him, too, even if he couldn’t quite pinpoint why. He just knew that deep down, the way he lived his life would catch up with him eventually. He would have to fix it somehow, hopefully before it killed him or another person he cared about, but to fix it required confronting some things about himself. He didn’t want to think about those things, and it left him at a terrible impasse.

Sitting on the steps of one of Enbarr’s many public stairs, watching a contented and optimistic public stream by him, Sylvain waited for life to give him some answers, but nothing came. He did think of Felix, however, and now that he was faced with the impetus to track down his old friend, he found it hard to stop thinking about him. How could it be only about the money when Felix was involved? Were his debts and responsibilities really so powerful that he could do nothing for himself? Wasn’t Felix his dearest friend in the whole world, no matter how long it had been since they the last day they’d seen each other?

He thought about that day a lot, specifically the part where Felix had shouted that he _just couldn’t do it anymore_ and called Sylvain a hypocrite. Sylvain had been angry at the time — who wouldn’t have been? — but over the years his fury for that argument had faded to fondness, the same way he could look back on girls he’d bedded and recalled the ugly break-ups with a laugh. He imagined Felix was much the same, somewhere out there in the world, thinking about him with equal exasperated humour. They’d always fought like that.

(_But maybe that time was different,_ an ugly part of him always said._)_

“Hey mister,” said a kid, and Sylvain looked up from his feet to see a youngster standing in front of him. “Wanna buy a poster?”

The kid held out a piece of paper with a picture of Edelgard on it. Or, at least, Sylvain supposed it was Edelgard — her features were not quite right, and she was fashioned out of ink run through a cheap printing press, giving her a slightly amorphous quality. Below her visage was reproduced text of her victory speech over the Church of Seiros five years earlier, and in his brief scan of it, Sylvain counted no less than three typographical errors.

He smiled a little ruefully.

“You know I was there for that speech?” he said.

“We were all there,” the kid said, as if Sylvain were an idiot. “She gave it in Enbarr.”

“No, I mean I was there. Like...” Sylvain pointed in the general direction of the palace. “I was with her. I fought in that war.”

“So did a lot of people,” the kid replied. “You want to buy a poster?”

“I mean that I— hey, how old are you?” Sylvain asked, annoyed. “Where do you get off telling me any of this, you were probably like four years old when it happened. You just know the stories. That’s not the same.”

“I was five,” the kid said. “But do you want to buy a poster?”

“No,” Sylvain said, “I got nothin’.”

“You don’t have any money?”

Sylvain bristled. He'd spent it on beer and chicken.

“Kid, even if I had a million coins, I wouldn’t be giving a single one to you, not with that attitude,” Sylvain replied.

The kid looked him over, no doubt judging Sylvain’s fancy new clothes and his freshly-washed hair and his lackadaisical ability to just sit on the steps watching the world go by. Sylvain, a man who had done things that could invite criticism from literally every person in all of Fódlan, had never felt so judged before than when under the gaze of that lone snotty-nosed brat.

“Cheap piece of shit,” the kid said, as if it were a fact rather than an insult.

“Hey!” Sylvain snapped, standing up.

The kid booked it. Sylvain was left on the receiving end of a lot of dirty looks from the people streaming by them, and while he felt tempted to explain himself, he knew it wouldn’t matter. He was the piece of shit getting annoyed at a dumb kid.

He was the piece of shit no one was going to remember.

All he could do was turn on his heel and march back to the palace, away from prying eyes, to a place where he felt even the slightest bit wanted.

Sylvain made his way through the Imperial Palace halls. Despite having spent a great deal of time in the Palace before, he stopped here or there for directions, and on a couple occasions he was given detailed instructions only to take a wrong turn in the labyrinthine halls anyway and wind up having to ask someone else. Edelgard wasn’t in her office as he hoped she would still be, which left him with tracking down her private quarters next. No guard stopped him. He thought that impressive; he hadn’t imagined an Emperor would feel so comfortable being found.

When he finally arrived at the grand carved doors to her quarters, he wasted no time hemming or hawing about bothering her. He rapped on Edelgard’s door, loud as he could, thinking it might be such a big door that it could dull sound from the other side. No one answered, so he rapped again. Still nothing. He raised a fist to rap once more, one last time before he resorted to finding Hubert instead.

Just before he could make contact, the latch clicked and the door swung open, revealing Edelgard in a housecoat. Evidently she had rushed to put it on, as the tie dangled loose and she instead held it shut as tightly as possible, hiding everything from the neck down. Her hands were pale.

It was an oddly humbling sight. Somehow he hadn’t imagined Edelgard to have a body from the chin down, and to see her try to hide it made Sylvain realize he’d never seen even Edelgard’s bare fingers before. Ten years was a long time to know someone without seeing their fingers. The thought almost made Sylvain forget why he came.

“My wife is sleeping,” she scolded him, her voice hushed and low. “And you missed dinner.”

“I’ll find Felix,” he said.

Her anger vanished like snowmelt, leaving only stark relief. Her expression relaxed, as did the rest of her, her body sinking against the doorframe.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Thank you, Sylvain.”

“Sure,” he replied. “But I do want coin for it. And...”

He trailed. Edelgard looked at him with mild concern.

“And?”

And what? It was too late to walk it back.

“I’m tired of being... the way I am,” he confessed.

“Well, I can’t pay you in character,” Edelgard told him. “But if you intend to fashion yourself into being a better man, I suppose I can pay you in coin... but it will come with terms. It will be supervised.”

He sighed, hung his head, and then nodded.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Of course,” Edelgard replied. “Thank you for doing this.”

He wondered just what was so important to her that only Felix would do, but he felt resigned to not knowing, so he didn’t ask. She had always kept information close to her chest, and Sylvain had the impression that if she didn’t tell him, it was either something world-shattering or something extremely personal. A person who didn’t let the world see her fingers was bound to have secrets.

He told himself he didn’t care, anyway. He was going to go for himself, and for Felix, and to fill his pockets with gold.

“What’s next?” he asked.

“We’ll arrange a battalion for you for your security, and send for one of our allies to accompany you. You’ll leave in two weeks.”

“Deploy for the mission at the end of the month,” Sylvain said. “Just like old times.”

“Just like old times,” Edelgard agreed.

"And the money," Sylvain said, "uh… if I could get it advanced, it can be entirely sent to the people I owe. No need to worry about a trust, I can get a job somewhere after this to pay for my own life."

She watched him carefully.

"Are you in trouble with someone?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Honest. Don't worry, it's not for anything nefarious, I'm just trying to make something right."

Edelgard looked contemplative, but she didn't ask. He supposed she thought it was pointless; her only concern was that she wasn't inviting him into her house if he was going to bring debt collectors to her doorstep. It would be bad for her image to be associating with someone like him, he figured.

"I'll let Hubert know I've approved," she said, finally. "You can speak to him to make those arrangements. He will want to investigate, you know. It'd be best if you just told him what was going on."

"I know," Sylvain said. He wasn't sure he wanted either of them to know where the money was going, but if it had to be done, he'd do it. "I will. Thank you, Edelgard."

"Thank you, Sylvain," Edelgard said.

Sylvain nodded and said goodnight, and he got his good nights in return. He walked away, back through the halls to his own rooms, where Jasmine or some other servant had already turned down the covers and prepared a clean nightgown for him. A mint candy in a paper wrapping had been left on his pillow, and Sylvain unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth while he undressed. He didn’t feel tired, but he laid down anyway, naked once more, staring up at the canopy hung over his bed. The fabric had floral patterns woven into it, and he figured that length of fabric was probably worth more than his current life.

He deeply hoped to the bottom of his soul that Felix would not be angry with him, and that he could be the man everyone wanted him to be.


	6. Setting Out

Two weeks later, on the morning he was to depart, Sylvain meandered the edge between sleep and wake. He registered that it was morning, of course, but his eyes protested at being opened to the sunlight streaming through his windows, and his body still longed to stay tucked into bed, where the chill of autumn couldn’t reach him. He sighed, rolled over and wrapped his arms around a pillow, which was cold from being left open to the air.

He felt a loneliness wash over him. He imagined an alternate version of this morning, where he might wrap his arms around a beautiful girl and murmur into the nape of her neck as his hand slid downwards. He imagined how he might feel her limbs slackening under him; the rush of coaxing an orgasm out of someone else felt almost as satisfying as getting one himself. There was no better way to start a morning, after all.

“Mm, Sylvain,” she would murmur, pleased. He liked hearing his name like that, high and breathy.

Laying between her legs, he would ask, teasingly: “You’re going to miss me, right?”

“I’m going to miss you,” she would sigh. She would reach up and tousle his hair with both hands, and gazing into his eyes, she would consider the handsomeness of his face and how very much she wanted him. Maybe she would tease him after, something good-natured but sharp, and he would relish the sting to his ego, but no matter how rude she was, she would kiss him in a way that said she didn’t think he was awful at all. Sylvain would indulge her for a moment before pulling away, as he wasn’t the sort of man who liked to kiss much, and then he would admire her tits a little.

“I’ll miss you too,” he would say, even though it wasn’t true, because he seldom met women he missed later on, and those that he did were never this forgiving of his—

Sylvain groaned, his mental fantasy vanishing into the aether as he came in his own hand. His chest felt tight for a moment, and he felt shame wash over him.

_Really? _He thought. _Really? That’s where we’re at? Jacking off to being an asshole? Jacking off to someone missing you? Wow. Wow!_

He peeled himself from bed, and being the type that never cleaned a bedchamber growing up, he wiped himself off on the sheets. After some contemplation, he decided that his fucked up mind and even more fucked up sexual mores were at least better than they _could_ be. He could have been completely amoral, and completely in it for himself, and not even care about his fictional lover’s pleasure. Wasn’t that worse? It was probably worse, he decided.

That wasn’t an unusual thought to start his day with, so he knew his mood would even out as the day wore on. There would be much less to think about when they headed off into the great unknown — well, mostly known, actually — to find his best friend. Hopefully he’d be successful. Hopefully he would get that money, and then he could right the few wrongs he could still right.

By time he was dressed to the waist, there was a knock on the door. He called out his salutations, and Hubert let himself in, accompanied by Jasmine and another household servant Sylvain didn’t know the name of but had also slept with. His eyes met with Jasmine’s for a moment, but both of them looked away, him because he didn’t want to be tempted into mischief in front of Hubert, and her because she likely had the misfortune of changing his sheets.

Sylvain turned his attention to Hubert, expecting some sort of direction. For a moment Hubert said nothing, perhaps waiting to be addressed, and Sylvain just sat there in his trousers, wondering if Hubert knew how many maids he had tumbled in the past two weeks.

“You look like you have no idea what you are doing,” Hubert remarked.

“What?”

“That blank look on your face,” Hubert said. “Shouldn’t you have been up an hour ago, seeing that your detachment is ready? Eating breakfast, perhaps?”

“I thought Edelgard was arranging all of that,” Sylvain replied, mostly to be obtuse. He knew exactly what was prepared and why, and he’d ensured of it the night before, after Hubert had already taken to his absurdly early nine o’clock bedtime. He just didn’t want to admit that he got a stupid look on his face when thinking about girls.

Hubert levelled him with a deeply unimpressed look.

“Of all the poor souls whose minds have been addled by war,” he said, “I have yet to meet a man who is as uniquely addled as you.”

“Whatever, Hubert,” Sylvain replied. “I’m real glad you’re not coming with me, by the way. If I had to watch you figure out how to mount that big dumb horse a couple times a day for weeks, I’d probably snap.”

“We can’t all be gifted cavalrymen,” Hubert replied, dryly. “But I shall keep that in mind next time you are in over your head. Regardless, is there anything else I can assist you in before your departure?”

“Yes, actually,” Sylvain said, crossing the room to the writing desk. He fetched his journal from the desk drawer and from between the pages he pulled out an envelope. It contained a note he'd written, but lacking a seal, he was trusting that Hubert wouldn't read it. “Send this with the gold Edelgard is advancing me. Like we talked about."

“I do recall,” Hubert remarked. "It would be easier if you just told me and spared me the time sending inquiries, by the way. I am going to find out anyway."

“I know.”

Sylvain offered nothing more than that. Somehow he preferred not having to admit to what he'd done out loud, even if Hubert could draw much worse conclusions on his own. There were very few people he could be that vulnerable with, after all.

Hubert paused, considering Sylvain's face, and the letter he still held close to his chest. Hubert was coming to some conclusions, and Sylvain didn’t feel like explaining himself or justifying making Hubert’s life more difficult than it already was. Sylvain chose to offer the letter to Hubert wordlessly.

“You are highly troublesome,” Hubert said, accepting it. He tucked it carefully into the inner pocket of his waistcoat. “Is that all?”

“Nope,” he said. “Don't read it.”

“Your secrets are safe with me,” Hubert said, and Sylvain was sure that was true, at least. “I will have your equipment brought up from the armoury so you can dress. You should eat breakfast in the meantime; you wouldn’t want to stop too early to rest and lose daylight.”

“Yeah, Mother, will do,” Sylvain replied. Hubert watched him in stony silence, and to ward off unsavoury reminders about Hubert's willingness to protect him, Sylvain turned his back to dress. Better to bare his ass than his soul, really. _But to wear armour,_ he thought. It had been some time since he had worn any.

Years ago, he had been adamant about selling his armour, under the impression that he would be giving up that life for good. He'd been on the cusp of going through with it when the Professor had convinced him to at least let them store it for him while he cooled off — he wasn’t particularly happy about it at the time, as it felt like they were withholding some sort of closure from him, but he'd agreed. It got them off his back. He was glad now that the Professor had reached out to him, because he might have just ignored anyone else, and now Hubert mentioning it filled him with an odd nostalgia. That felt exciting. That armour had been a gift from his father when he'd become a man, and it had once filled him with pride to wear it. He thought maybe he could recapture that feeling and be his old self again. A happier self.

Wouldn't he look dashing riding up to Felix in it, too? Sylvain did like to make a good impression.

“Do you want the Lance of Ruin, too?” Hubert asked.

“No,” Sylvain said, quickly. He didn’t think for a second that Edelgard would actually let him take it, either; surely Hubert was testing him. “But... maybe I’d like to see it, if there’s time.”

“You didn’t think to _look_ at it in the two weeks you were slinking around the castle, eating candied plums and cajoling scullery maids into meeting you in shadowy alcoves?” Hubert asked. He said it like Sylvain was deplorable, but that felt like a given.

“Nope.”

“I might have thought a little about the legendary relic entrusted to me by generations of my fore-bearers, if I had two weeks in which so little was expected of me.”

“Hubert, if you had two weeks to do absolutely nothing, we would find you standing on some wall by the end of the first day, threatening to jump unless you were permitted to double-check Edelgard’s to-do list.”

Hubert was very quiet for a moment, watching Sylvain with an unshakable patience.

“I understand that you think my dedication to Lady Edelgard is something worthy of laughter and scorn,” he said, his tone very calm, and very even. “You may continue to pretend that my duties are no different from those of a butler if it makes you feel better about yourself. I understand that you have precious little else to cling to.”

Sylvain said nothing. Hubert had struck a nerve, and he did not want Hubert to know that was the case. He didn’t want to say that he had intentions of cleaning up his act and fixing his poor reputation, because if he failed, he couldn’t bear the idea of disappointing them as much as he would have disappointed himself. Being a real man, a man who confronted his problems head-on and made amends for them, well, that really seemed to be the only thing he could cling to.

He didn’t want to be a man who cracked under pressure.

Hubert left without another word, and the servants went with him. Jasmine gave him a look over her shoulder as she exited. Sylvain smiled and she did not. That wasn’t entirely surprising. It was sad, but he was used to it for as long as he could remember.

It ended up being an odd relief to be dressed in armour once more. Standing in front of the floor-length mirror, a few pairs of hands flitting around him doing up buckles and latching hooks, Sylvain watched himself transform back into a facsimile of his old self. As always, he was a tall, strapping man with broad shoulders and a handsome face, but in armour his training was on display to the world. He looked more at home in armour than he did in anything else, even half-buttoned shirts or with nothing on but a smile. It suited him. 

And true, it wasn’t all the same — his armour fit a shade too tight in the waist, where he’d clearly indulged a little too much in wine and not enough in strenuous physical exercise, but it fit, and he could fix the rest later. He also needed a new gambeson; the old one had not fared as well as the armour in storage, and five years later, it felt a little musty, and it smelled a little of metal in a way he didn’t like. There was also a blood stain that had never quite come out. It wasn’t exactly visible, as the black fabric absorbed the stain well, but he could feel it when he passed his fingers over it, slightly stiffer with a puckered ridge where the surface had been mended with a heavy waxed thread. It lined up perfectly with the gap between his breastplate and his hip armour, the kind of gap in which a blade could be slotted perfectly.

Just thinking about it made the scar underneath twinge, as if sensing its own proximity to the armour that had once failed its flesh.

“It’s unusual to see you in my colours,” Edelgard said from the doorway.

Sylvain bowed his head, and the servants stepped away from him and bowed deeper. Without a word they left. Sylvain had a fleeting fantasy that he was being seduced, and Edelgard was going to order him to unclothe himself again so she could have her way with him, her wayward servant, as he was so irresistible.

“I never _really_ looked good in blue,” he replied. “It’s the hair. It clashes.”

She almost smiled, just a single, solitary tug on one corner of her mouth.

“You don’t think all that red is too much?” she asked.

“Rich, coming from you,” he replied, and that got a real smile, small and fleeting as it was.

“I suppose,” she agreed. “But even so. That blue is a part of you, no matter where your allegiance was truly pledged. You never really got a chance to wear mine.”

Sylvain nodded. Any stupid fantasy about being seduced died in its infancy, smothered by none other than the ghost of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. He didn’t want to talk about having spent most of the war behind enemy lines, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to invite conversation or if she was openly bleeding guilt all over him.

“I can wear the blue if you want,” Sylvain replied.

“No, no. Pay no mind. I’m just thinking out loud.”

_ Hmm._

“Hopefully you won’t need armour at all,” Edelgard said, stepping into his space to adjust the way the cape sat on his shoulders. He would have preferred to go without, but the weather was turning fast enough that he would appreciate it later. Edelgard’s gloved fingers nimbly arranged the pleats that shaped the cape over his shoulders. “But we don’t really know what Felix’s state of mind is. It’s better to be safe.”

“Are you saying you think he’ll attack me?” Sylvain said, lightly as he could.

“No,” Edelgard said, firmly. “I’m saying it’s a possibility. We’ve all been burned by this kind of situation before.”

Sylvain felt tempted to reach out and shove her away, but he thought he might get thrown in a dungeon if he did, so he just replied: “That’s _not_ Felix.”

“Don’t be careless,” she replied. “All that stands between a good man and the brink is pain in the right measure.”

Too true, and even five years later, still too raw.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Edelgard took a small velveteen pouch from her belt, and she held it up to him.

“I was advised against giving you this,” she said, and Sylvain felt like she was saying it for the express purpose of making him feel like an asshole. He took it anyway, because he knew there was money inside just from the weight of how it hung in her hand, and because he loved another opportunity to fail her. “Your battalion will be handling most of the finances on your trip, but I want you to have something with you in case you get in trouble.”

“Me? In trouble?” Still, he shoved it in his belt so it hung heavy against his thigh. “Thank you.”

She walked a circle around him, inspecting him for any more imperfections, but she seemed to come up with nothing else. She stopped in front of him again, and though her mouth stayed settled in a hard line, there was a softness to her eyes.

“Travel well, Sylvain,” she said, and then she left, just like that.

Hubert, who had been looming in the doorway the entire time, gave Sylvain a curt nod and followed her out.

Sylvain rolled his shoulders experimentally and thought about the road ahead. He felt sure that Felix would be right in the head. Being wary felt like a betrayal of friendship, a betrayal of everything they’d ever shared or known about each other. But, if he was being honest, there was plenty of reason to worry, too. 

It wouldn’t be the first time the worst had happened.

The route had been laid out for him, and passage with third parties arranged where necessary. Edelgard had thought it best to go partly by ship, skirting around the rim of the bay and then docking in a port city called Wertheim on the edge of Varley territory. From there, Sylvain and his detachment would travel north-east to the Oghma mountains. It occurred to him immediately that it was less expensive to go by land, but that she hadn't invested in the speediness of a ship for the sake of finding Felix sooner. Sylvain suspected she wanted them to go by ship because it was more controlled, and offered him fewer opportunities to get distracted or stray. Despite that, he didn't put up a fuss. He'd never sailed before, and the novelty was a bandage on his pride.

He would not travel without a friend, either. At first he had feared he was being chaperoned, but Sylvain had been delighted to learn that it was just Bernadetta, who he liked a great deal. She was traveling home to Varley, as she had spent the past few months in a cottage just south of Enbarr, summering with her husband. For much of the remaining nobility in Empire territory, this was the first year since the war where they had been permitted to take significant amounts of leisure time, and many of them had taken advantage. Sylvain imagined that to the notoriously indolent nobility, five years was a tremendous amount of time to wait, especially after five years of war before that, but he did not doubt that for Edelgard, it was a massive reward, and one that needed to be _well_ earned.

As far as Sylvain was concerned, the only good nobility were ones that actually worked, but he could make an exception for dear friends. He spotted Bernadetta already waiting for him at the city gates, and he bellowed her name and laughed when she startled. Without further ado he ran to her and swept her into a bear hug. Bernadetta squeaked, the whole of her stiff as a board until she was set back on her feet. She looked up at him with watery eyes.

“Sylvain! I thought I’d never see you again!” she wailed.

He chose to not let it bother him that everyone assumed he, too, had been so far gone as to be lost entirely.

“Well, now you get to see me every day, at least for a little while.”

She beamed up at him. Though time had granted her a bit more height, she hadn’t filled out much, and he could tell she was a beanpole even in a shapeless dress. She still wore her hair short, though pinned back from her eyes, and her favourite colour hadn’t changed much, as she still draped herself in purple, purple and more purple. She looked well, cheeks aglow and eyes shining, and it filled Sylvain with a fierce happiness to see her looking so well. It would be easy to fill the hours with conversation.

“I still don’t travel well,” she warned him, worrying the seams of her gloves with her fingertips, over and over and over again. “I get very seasick...”

“How’d you survive the trip to Brigid?” Hadn’t she gone? He seemed to recall something of that sort, something about Petra’s grandfather, but he’d been in the Kingdom at the time and unable to join.

“I didn’t,” Bernadetta mourned. “A part of me actually died and I haven’t been the same since. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Why’d you come now?”

“I like to travel.”

Sylvain laughed.

“No, why’d you decided to vacation so close to Enbarr? Shouldn’t you go somewhere warm, where you can sun yourself on the beach and get drunk with a lover? You know, get away from married life?”

“Ugh, Sylvain,” she groaned. “We wanted to be close by, and it’s a good thing we were, because I guess there was some sort of dispute between a couple of the villages and Caspar needed to get back as fast as possible.”

“And I’m so slow-moving, huh?”

Bernadetta looked vaguely concerned that she’d offended him, at least for an instant, but his easy smile was impossible to miss. She giggled.

“I just shouldn’t be in the saddle as much, I guess,” she said. “While we were here, we found out I’m pregnant, so...”

She trailed. Sylvain let that information sink in, and though it left him feeling cold, he grinned and clutched her cheeks between his palms. He leant in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Her face went beet red, but she smiled, too.

“Congratulations," he said, as though he hadn’t just been saddled with escorting a pregnant woman for the better part of a week. "You must be really excited.”

“I’m terrified,” she announced, “but yes... also very excited. Caspar was over the moon, you know, he was so loud I think he woke up the whole palace.”

She clasped both hands over the lower half of her face, as if that might shield her from embarrassment, but the memory clearly warmed her to her core. Even Sylvain’s cold, cynical heart twitched, entertaining for a moment that two people could love each other enough to actually want to have babies together, and be _excited_ about the prospect. For Bernadetta, one of the sweetest, funniest girls he’d ever known, he hoped it was possible. She deserved it.

“You can tell me the whole story while we’re on the road,” he said, and she agreed.

After helping Bernadetta onto her sprightly mare, Sylvain mounted his new palfrey horse, a stallion with a cropped mane and light armour; he was called Ashes, as it fit his colouring, and he was good for travel. When he was still a nobleman, and throughout the war, he had generally owned five or so horses at a time — a man in his profession needed a couple good destriers, which were best for aggressive fights, and a couple coursers for more agility in pitched battles, and at least one pricker for scouting and general travel.One never knew when a battle could steal one away, after all, and it wouldn’t do to be a cavalryman without a horse. It almost made Sylvain laugh to think about the kind of money he had once spent just on horses, considering now he only owned one traveling horse and one... well, there wasn’t much nice he could say about Horse. She was a hackney, and she was miserable to ride.

He looked behind him and inventoried his detachment, a battalion of ten cavalrymen and women he had scarcely spoken to before, and their five pack horses. Poor old Horse was amongst them, no doubt the slowest and weakest of the lot, but he had felt badly about leaving her behind where someone would inevitably slaughter her for fertilizer or to feed the poor. The least he could do, he decided, was give the old nag a tour of the beautiful Empire he’d fought for before she died of old age (or excitement.)

Sylvain looked at the road ahead, beyond the gates of Enbarr.

He was going to find Felix, and then he was going to piece his life back together.

Above Enbarr, Edelgard von Hresvelg, Emperor of the United Kingdoms of Fódlan, stood on a balcony overlooking much of the city. That high in the air, the wind whipped mercilessly at her hair, sending long locks of white streaming on the air like banners. She tucked one down only for it to stream loose again. She tucked it down once more and sighed before it was loosed again, and she gave up. 

In the distance, she could see a small gathering of soldiers departing for the city gates. She could identify their leader by his red cape, which she supposed was grandly spread over the back end of his horse, but to her vision was a mere triangle of red flitting amongst the rest of the crowds. The sight of his departure filled her with relief and dread in equal measure. 

Hubert placed a hand on her shoulder, his broad palm engulfing much of it. She turned her head to him, just enough to acknowledge him.

“You seem distracted,” he said. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, but the both of them knew that wasn’t entirely true. She had been troubled as of late, and it did not seem to her that a resolution was anywhere close. It seemed unfair to be unable to simply enjoy her life as a newlywed, but Edelgard had long accepted that she would never enjoy the privilege of ease. There was always so much to be done.

Hubert moved behind her. She stood very still as he slipped his arms under hers, wrapping them around her ribs and holding her to his chest. She sighed, and though she felt inclined to scold him for being so affectionate on the balcony, she knew as well as he did that no one would be able to see them at this distance. She relaxed in his arms, feeling the weight of her exhaustion leave her, as he could bear it all for her, if only for a moment.

“It’s unlike you to be so reserved with us,” he said. “Byleth and I would like to help you, if only you would tell us what is on your mind.”

“I know,” she said. “I feel your care deeply.”

“Then why, my lady, spare us the details?”

“I’m just not ready,” she replied. “There are so many things I must confront, things that I’ve long left behind... I’m afraid that if I open the door to even one of them, they’ll all rush in and overwhelm me. But if I don’t...”

Hubert was quiet for a moment, his arms still strong around her, his chin rested atop her head. Edelgard breathed, fortified by his presence.

“What else can I do?” he asked. “I’ve given you Sylvain, and we have planned his passage to retrieve Felix. We’ve made arrangements for Fhirdiad. I will do anything at all to ease what troubles you.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t much more you can do,” Edelgard admitted. “You have done everything within your power already, Hubert. The rest is up to time.”

“And Sylvain,” Hubert said, a touch doubtfully. “What if he fails?”

“Then I do it myself,” she replied.

She could tell Hubert didn’t like that idea much. She felt the rumble at the back of his throat, and his grip on her tightened momentarily in a way she liked, as it made her feel even more secure. She pet his forearm, almost absently, her attention moving back to the city before them.

“I don’t want to travel for personal reasons if I can avoid it,” she said. “The city needs me here. I worry that my absence would slow progress, and the sooner we can prove to the world that our vision creates a better life for all, the faster other cities will be in adopting our new ways.”

Hubert hummed his agreement.

“If it is something we must do, we will do whatever we can do ensure your needs are met as well as Fódlan’s.”

She craned her neck to look up at him.

“Fódlan must always come before me.”

“I know,” Hubert replied, but Edelgard had known this man for every meaningful year of her life, and his ability to disregard her wishes in order to take care of her was as apparent as it always was. She sighed, settling again in his arms. He kissed the top of her head curtly.

The soldiers had passed beyond the gate while she was distracted. Edelgard felt even more dread than she had before, but then relief in equal measure. It was beyond her grasp again, at least for a little while. All she could do was focus on what she did maintain control over.

The balcony door opened, and both of them turned to look. Hubert released her as she moved away from him, as practiced as always, but they needn’t have bothered. Edelgard smiled.

“Good afternoon, my love. You were sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to wake you. Are you hungry?”

Byleth nodded and looked between the two of them with a small smile. Though both felt brighter merely for her presence, then she saw their expressions she tilted her head, questioning what line of conversation she had interrupted.

“Nothing to be concerned about,” Hubert replied. “We were just watching Sylvain leave for the Oghma mountains.”

Byleth raised her eyebrows gently. Edelgard nodded.

“With any luck, that’s where Felix is,” Edelgard replied. “If he has moved on, we can only hope that he’s at least left clues as to where he had gone to next. But all of that is beyond our control now — shall we get some lunch? Hubert will fix you a cup of tea...”

Byleth just nodded. She hoped he could be found, too. Edelgard moved to her and took her hands, kissing her on each cheek, and then the three of them went inside to where their coddled eggs, toasts and cheeses awaited them.


	7. Natural Beauty

The road to the port city of Wertheim took them along the edge of salt flat territory. From the road, Sylvain could see fishermen at work emptying weirs of thrashing fish left behind by the tide, and the gatherers scraping salt from the stone walls. The Wyvern Moon was the best time to collect salt, as it marked the end of a long summer of tides flowing into the shallowpools and drying up again, over and over, until the salt had grown into a thick crust. That salt would be broken up and packaged in large bags of twenty pounds or more and shipped all across Fódlan, with profits and taxes flowing right back to Enbarr.

For many years, that salt had failed to reach Faerghus, for one reason or another — war, trade disputes, spite, road conditions. Salt was so desirable that relations between Enbarr and Fhirdiad were at times maintained only to ensure that salt would continue to reach the north. Sylvain had heard that salt could be mined, and he supposed the people of Sreng and Duscur never seemed to lack for it, but Faerghus relied on Adrestia the same way some men still asked after their ex-lovers while cursing their names: too comfortably. Faerghus's independence had been a brief stint in the grand scheme of history, after all.

But in times of war, the flow of salt stoppered almost entirely. Sylvain had spent much of the war in Fhirdiad, and after then storehouses had been depleted entirely, he had begun choking down meat that had never been loved by salt. He’d hated every moment of it. He remembered all-too vividly being threatened at blade’s end for once outright declining to eat it.

Sylvain shook himself off. He decided not to think about those things. As they passed through the countryside, children in the fields ran to the side of the road to watch them ride by, cheering and calling out their support. In that moment, it felt like the peacetime of his school days, traveling down all roads from Garreg Mach for assignments meant to temper he and his classmates for a lifetime of law enforcement and skirmishes with competing territories. It had prepared them for when war proved to be as inevitable as it felt.

He raised his hand, waving to the children as he passed, and they cheered harder.

As they took the road through a large village called Narbonne, a couple nuns outside of a small abbey waved to them, too. Their battalion had passed a number of churches and chapels already, some of them cared for, others partially dismantled for timber and stone. Since the revolution, it had never been easier to believe in the Goddess's existence, but it had never been harder to justify why humans should pray to her when her ancient followers were such disreputable beasts. It left a lot of churches with such small congregations that they had joined together just to survive, and the congregations that remained struggled to define their new relationship with the heavens. The church as an institution had been forced into a time of harsh regulation, too. Under a unified Fódlan, religious institutions were required to refuse gifts and forbidden from collecting tithes from the peasantry or owning land. Many churches had taken up the task of running mills, plowing fields and tending to flocks of sheep in order to fund their operations. As far as Sylvain had seen, believers tended to assist in the church’s survival anyway, and those small churches seemed to feel relieved to make the believers their first priory, instead of forwarding their congregation’s gold to the Central Church so that the Archbishop and her ilk could have yet another fancy gold mantle or some newly bronzed statue of some saint. And, to keep their patience and loyalty, Edelgard had been generous to them too: she offered grazing rights for their sheep, free salt for their tables and mills, and forgiveness on tolls on trade routes.

But no matter how the church reinvented itself, Sylvain steered clear of them, even though they were easy places to find a hot meal or a place to sleep between jobs. He didn't care how friendly the abbess could be, or how happy the nuns would be to feed them lunch in exchange for some coin and well-wishes. It wasn't even worth going there for all the young trouble-making women placed there by their families so they could think about the goddess and clean up their acts — not even an easy lay could tempt Sylvain past their thresholds. Though these small country churches seemed harmless, Sylvain did not believe lopping "of Seiros" off the end of the church's name had changed much about them.

After what he'd seen, the church was always going to be the church, and now he lived in a godless world.

He felt a little bad pushing Bernadetta to travel so far on such few breaks, but he reasoned she wasn’t so pregnant that it was dangerous. Uncomfortable, perhaps, but no church was inviting enough to sway him, so they carried on the road north-west towards the port city. Wertheim was new to Sylvain, but he had heard much about the terrible road to it. As the marshlands had little in the way of firm ground, carts and carriages were forced to wind around the firmest paths instead of passing straight through, making journeying by anything but horse an exhausting affair.

He was delighted to learn that the roads had been rebuilt properly and paved in recent years, giving him further cause to push on. They were still steep at times, and Sylvain knew some would flood as the tide came in, for the gravel laid down was washed away in places where the road dipped between marsh peaks, but it seemed to him a vast improvement on what it had been before. It made him think about Gautier lands, and how the mountains could make for treacherous travel. The bravery of any given merchant dictated the survival of some of the more rural villages. Those roads had been carved through the mountains to make the shortest roads possible, but those steep inclines would become become nearly impassable in the snowy seasons. Even in the best of weather, it could take days to travel between remote villages and the commercial centres closer to House Gautier’s manor. People died. People died a lot.

And, Sylvain thought, nothing had changed. Ingrid had likely tried her best, but Gautier lands stretched far north from Galatea, more than a three days’ march in good weather. There was nothing she could do for his lands, not when she already struggled to maintain her own.

His own people were no doubt goners, and though Edelgard had offered, he had declined, time and time again, to try to save them. No one else would, either. He imagined they were eating grass and acorns to survive and were starving anyway, their barley crops worthless, their people too weak to mine. Perhaps they had all fled South, giving up their homeland as he did, hoping to make a better life elsewhere. Even then, their pockets weren’t lined by the sale of the lands. Could any of them hope to make it any further than Fhirdiad, a city which, as far as he heard, was packed to the rafters with migrants? Would they be chased down by Sreng invasions? What was even happening with the border?

He was no better than––

“This is the quietest you’ve _ever_ been,” Bernadetta said. “What are you even thinking about?”

“Lots of things,” Sylvain replied.

“Like what?”

“Empire-building,” Sylvain said. He craned his neck to look back at her. “Edelgard’s been working her magic on all of this.” He waved his hand over his head, _around_. “What’s your part to play?”

“Ummm, me personally, not much, but Varley land is mostly woodland, so we produce a lot of lumber. I do paperwork... so much paperwork.”

Sylvain thought of the scaffolding all over Enbarr, and the roads being built, and the refurbishment of the villages. No doubt, Varley wood made it all possible. Sylvain supposed Edelgard had friends everywhere, and each of their lands could be purposed for something great in service to an Empire. He wondered what she would do with Faerghus land, when she got that far. Or what Lorenz was already doing in the Alliance, and whether it continued Edelgard’s vision.

“What’s going on in Gautier?” Bernadetta asked. “You ever hear about it?”

“Nothing,” Sylvain said. “Ingrid and I haven’t spoken for a couple years. I’ve written her on and off, but I’m never really in one place long enough to get an answer.”

“Oh,” Bernadetta said, disappointed. “That’s sad. You two were so close. And she was so nice... really, really scary, but so nice.”

“Scary?” Sylvain laughed. He didn't disagree, but he also didn't think Bernadetta had cause to be scared of Ingrid, not like he did.

“For me, at least,” Bernadetta insisted. And then, curious as can be: “Are you going to go see her after this?”

“Maybe,” Sylvain said. “I’d like to see her again...”

Years ago, as students of the Officer's Academy, she had scolded him about leaving his messes everywhere for her to clean up, and his lack of respect for her. For a time, he had cleaned up his act, promising that his indiscretions would never again darken her days, and during the war, he _had_ been better to her. Ingrid was one of the only women he had ever, truly loved, and he knew that only because he had tried to change for her. He had failed her miserably in the end, and he'd done it in a way that was far more personal than the way he'd failed a lot of people in Faerghus. He thought maybe she would never want to see him again. And who could blame her?

Sylvain wasn’t sure he deserved any kindness.

They spent the night in Wertheim, getting in sometime after midnight, and there they holed up in an inn until dawn. Sylvain didn’t sleep, imagining he’d do so on the ship, and instead spent the night as Bernadetta’s pillow, letting her drool on his sleeve as she slouched against his shoulder. At dawn they ate a quick breakfast of bread and cheese and cured salmon, and set about loading the horses into the ship. Being disinclined to use stairs or even manage inclines, the horses took quite some time, and Horse was the worst of all, patently refusing to move down the ramp into the hold until Sylvain nearly threw his back out pushing her down it. He felt annoyed, but he didn’t hold it too badly against her; after all, even the best warhorses were used to being marched across the lands, not ferried across the sea.

They would sail for two days, if the winds were right, skirting up the coast. They would sleep in hammocks, rocked to sleep by the waves as the ship pitched back and forth, and Sylvain vowed to spend as much time as possible relaxing. He would need to, given it could take him weeks to comb the mountainsides for Felix.

It also felt exhausting to be out in the world once more as a soldier. Though a day in the saddle hadn’t left him crippled, it didn’t feel as easy to return to as it had riding to Enbarr; he’d ridden quite regularly since he was a little boy, and so he had no memories of what it had felt like to be an unpracticed rider. He’d also forgotten that wearing armour was a skill of its own — he felt encased, like his body had grown too accustomed to being unencumbered by it, and the fit wasn’t even remotely as good as he’d initially thought. When he’d given up his armour, he’d done it with the expectation that it would never matter again, and that he was done for good. The aches felt like punishment for how much he’d misjudged what he’d really wanted — if he even wanted this. His old friend Doubt and his brother Fear were starting to whisper to him more and more as the journey wore on, and it had only been a day.

It would take time, he learned, to readjust.

Late morning on their first day on the water, Sylvain stood on the port side of the deck and looked out at the land passing them by as they set sail. He could see the mountain ranges that flanked Merceus’s shore, which Sylvain knew better for its road to Garreg Mach to the north. The mountains looked blue in the distance, their great peaks like dog teeth sinking into the sky, and as they passed to the horizon, they only got bluer. The small islets and rocky crags dotting the coast seemed almost close enough to swim to. The sun shone so brightly across the water that he was sure it was a beam of light directed specifically at him, determined to lay bare all his demons. It chased him even as the ship sailed on.

“Ugh,” Bernadetta groaned, somewhere behind him. He glanced back. She looked extremely woozy. “Whose genius idea was it to put me on a boat?”

“It’s not a boat, it’s a ship, Bernie,” Sylvain said. “Come look at the landscape, it’s beautiful. You’ll feel better.”

“If I move, I may hurl,” she informed him.

“Well, I’ll carry you, then,” he said, grinning.

She gave him a long-suffering, set-upon look; Bernadetta had always been prone to such things, and sometimes it amused Sylvain to imagine her in her seventies, a grey-haired woman approximately three feet tall and still whining like a little girl. At the very least, she was cute enough to make it work for her. For now, he contemplated scooping her up and decided she wouldn’t like that very much.

“Say, Bernie,” he said, figuring a distraction was better. “You finished any new books since I saw you last?”

She perked up a little at that, though she kept her arms fastened firmly over her belly.

“A few,” she said. “I should have thought to bring one so you could read it... I think you would like it.”

“What’s it about?” he asked.

“It’s a little complicated to summarize,” she said. “But you’ve heard the legend of the Exalt King, right? I was reading stories about his exploits so I decided to write a new adventure for him and his wife. His wife had been sacrificed years before to end a war, but he hears rumours that she’s still alive, so he goes off to find her, only to discover that she’s lost all her memories of him and now he has to make her love him again! They’re both drawn to each other so much that they can’t resist, but their feelings are all tangled up, and he wants to share all of their memories together but she’s overwhelmed by them, so there’s a lot of conflict...”

Perfect. He could always get Bernadetta talking that way, and Sylvain joined her on the bench.

“And lots of sex scenes?” Sylvain asked. “You still write those, right?”

Bernadetta flushed red up to her hairline.

“No! I mean, yes, but...”

“Well, now I wish you brought one, because I loved your sex scenes back in the day. They were very creative.”

Bernadetta moaned.

“That’s sooooo embarrassing, you have to forget you ever read those! Back then I was still, um, you know, so...”

“Yeah, every scene was all torrid love affairs and frantic love-making without any bodily fluids and everybody always climaxed at the same time. I know. I remember.”

“Sylvain!” she moaned, slapping him on the arm. “Forget that!! Forget every word of it! I can’t believe you said that, I’m never going to live this down...”

“I loved it!” Sylvain insisted. “It was so fun.”

“Fun?!”

“Yeah! Real sex is never that perfect, and you had so much enthusiasm, and it was always romantic, even when it got a little weird. Like that whole thing you wrote once with the peasant girl who got with the wealthy nobleman who had a thing for ropes and––”

“Nooo!!” Bernadetta moaned, reaching to cover his mouth, and he playfully fended her off, just laughing.

“Really, though,” Sylvain said. “I loved it. I mean that.”

Bernadetta groaned once more, hands covering her face, but she muttered: “Thank you...” And then, raising her face again, with more courage: “Thank you. Really. It means a lot, back then it was completely mortifying but always meant so much to me that someone liked them, you know...?”

“I know,” he said, fondly, and he put an arm around her and squeezed her firmly. “And I’m thrilled for you. You bagged yourself a great husband, and you’re gonna have a million kids, and you can while away your days doing logging paperwork and writing erotica.”

“Why’d you have to put it like that?” Bernadetta demanded, but she leant into him, too, smiling. “But I’m happy... I’m really happy. Thank you.”

“Any time,” Sylvain replied.

Bernadetta looked up at him. For a moment her gaze felt fond and warm, but the longer it lingered, the more the cogs turned in her mind, and then Sylvain felt himself waiting to take a knife to the ribs.

“I was so worried when you left,” she said, finally, her voice going soft. “We all missed you a lot... why did you...?”

“Eh,” he trailed, buying time to string together an answer. He supposed he should put together a good one, seeing as he was going to be seeing a lot of old faces again if he stuck around. “I don’t know. Part of me didn’t realize I would be missed, but the joke’s on me. It sounds like _I_ missed a lot.”

“You did,” Bernadetta said. “My and Caspar’s wedding, Edie’s wedding, everything going on in Enbarr... Annette is teaching at the School of Sorcery but she sends a lot of really funny letters, and Lysithea visits when she can...”

“A lot of weddings,” he said.

“Linhardt is getting married next year, you’ll at least get to come to that.”

Sylvain could not think of a reason to move back to the capital less inspiring than seeing all his friends get married while he pissed his life away, but he supposed that’s just how it had to be. Maybe it would be motivating. Maybe he would meet someone and turn it around. Being with someone made you want to be a less shitty person, right?

“Sure,” he said. “Assuming I’m not wandering around the woods for the rest of my life, sleeping in hollow trees and waiting for Felix to let himself get found. I miss that guy.”

Bernadetta didn’t seem to know what to say to that. And then:

“Ohh!” she exclaimed.

“What?”

“Whale!”

Some other calls arose amongst the sailors. Sylvain turned. The water sped by them, as still as he had ever seen it, and he searched but found nothing. Bernadetta rushed to the edge, stepping up on the lowest rail and leaning out so far that Sylvain grabbed onto the back of her belt just in case she toppled. She laughed and pointed: “Wow!”

A whale rose to the surface, exhaling and sending a great gust of breath and mist into the air. That spout lingered like a ghost, even as the whale tucked forward and disappeared under the water again. Sylvain felt a rush of excitement, too. He’d never seen a whale before. He found himself leaning out just as Bernadetta did, hoping it would surface a third time.

“It was so big,” Bernadetta cried.

The whale rose again, and this time Sylvain heard not only the sharp blast of the exhale, but then the sharp suck of air as it inhaled and dove again. The length of its body and size of its fin seemed massive to him, bigger even than a bull, and that was just what he could see above the surface. He guessed it must be twenty feet, maybe thirty.

“What do you think it wants from us?” Bernadetta asked, but she seemed as fascinated as she was nervous. Sylvain recalled her margin-doodles of pitcher plants and thought she might love nothing more than for a whale to carry her away, screaming-laughing.

“I heard they wreck ships,” Sylvain said, and he watched the whale rise a third time, higher than the last. For a moment he thought it might be rising to ram them like the stories said, but instead it went right back down, so sharply that its massive tail rose above the water line, waved to them and vanished below.

“Naw,” a sailor called, down the length of the deck. “As long as you don’t go swimmin’ with them, you’re fine. They come to us because they’re curious.”

“Curious?” Sylvain replied.

“Aye,” the sailor said. “They don’t know any more of what we do up here than we know about them down there.” He grinned. “They’re gawking at you just as you’re gawking at them.”

“Well, they should stick their heads up so we can both get a proper look,” Sylvain replied, feeling heartened.

“It went down,” Bernadetta said to the sailor. “Will it come up again?”

“Soon, yes,” the sailor replied. “Probably on the other side of the ship.”

Bernadetta and Sylvain exchanged a glance, and it seemed they shared the same thought, for the two of them jumped off the rail and rushed to the other side. There, Bernadetta flung herself against the rail and clung for dear life, and Sylvain looked up at the rope scaffolding going up to the mast. He climbed it, hand over hand and foot over foot, until he could see well ahead of them as well as well behind.

He let out a shout of delight when not one, not two, but _three_ whales surfaced, one after the other, all spouting and leaving their great smoky trails behind them. Sylvain’s heart swelled as he watched them all rise and fall, again and again, their dark backs glossy-wet and their great, blasting breaths echoing across the water.

“You see ‘em, Bernie?!”

“They’re beautiful,” she declared, and her smile seemed bigger than Sylvain had ever seen before, her cheeks pink from the wind. She tore her eyes from the whales just long enough to look up at him and say, “Aren’t they beautiful?”

Leant into the ropes, his lungs full of crisp air, Sylvain looked out across the Empire lands and their greenness, their great mountains and lush woods, and he felt fortunate to be able to see such a thing. Gulls cried as they circled overhead, and the coastline stretched on for what seemed like an eternity, perfect as a painting.

_No, _he told himself. _Not the Empire, not anymore_.

“It’s all beautiful,” he replied, and then, leaning into the ropes so he wouldn’t fall, he cupped both hands to his mouth and shouted for all the kingdoms to hear:

“Fódlan is beautiful!”

Sylvain spent much of the voyage on the top deck, where the rocking of the ship felt most obvious under his feet but the air was the freshest and the sights too beautiful to ignore. Bernadetta accompanied him when she felt up to it, but she spent more of her time down below, sleeping off the nausea and doing little embroideries of birds and whales and other things they saw. She fixated on these handicrafts with a particular doggedness, determined to pin the image down before the memory grew too blurry, and so Sylvain left her to it. Closer to evening, when the whales returned, he spared a scrap of paper out of his journal on scribbling the likeness of their tails sticking straight up out of the water, poised to disappear entirely. He brought that down to Bernadetta, and she looked at it like something precious, thanked him and shooed him away so she could finish her embroidery. Sylvain, laughing, returned to the top deck.

He didn’t particularly mind being alone here or there. He was the sort to seek out company in bursts, and so he had spent much of the past few years flitting through social interactions, having the same conversations over and over again. He did this with the sailors now, and his own detachment, knowing he would likely never see them again after this trip. He always told them the same stories, and the same jokes, as he knew they were the ones that made him seem friendly and affable, and would get all the right laughs.

(The funny thing about being a womanizer was being accused of having a script, some magic set of lines to make a girl fall into his bed. The accusations weren’t wrong, exactly, but they were off the mark in one critical way — his script for men was just assumed to be more genuine somehow. It amused Sylvain about as much as it annoyed him. But the tragic thing about having a script was that Sylvain fell for his own bullshit, too — there was nothing worse than listening to yourself sound more interesting or more attractive than you really were, and watching people fall for that person instead.)

As evening fell, Sylvain fetched himself a light dinner from their packs, supplemented by some rum he sweet-talked out of a lady sailor, who he had snuck off to the storerooms with. He ate her out, both of them apparently well-practiced at the art of surreptitious hook-ups in storerooms — him at Garreg Mach, and her evidently on this very ship. Then, after a chaste kiss goodbye, Sylvain went back up to the top deck and climbed all the way to the crow’s nest, where a very friendly sailor explained how to use a sextant. Sylvain did not admit he had thought the crow’s nest would be empty, and that it would have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rub one out while looking at the world going by. Oh well! He tried, and at least he learned how to use a sextant for his trouble.

“Sylvaaain?” Bernadetta called, in that kind of voice where he could tell she _really_ didn’t want to shout but had to try her best. It sounded like a mouse shouting, if a mouse could shout at all.

Sylvain returned to the ropes and made his way down. Bernadetta waited for him at the bottom, her hands clasping something small. He gave her a wondering look as he reached the bottom rungs of the ropes and hopped off it, and she offered a piece of fabric to him.

“I made this for you,” she said.

Sylvain took it. The little patch of cloth had been embroidered with a whale tail in red thread, sticking straight out of the water. He looked at it for a moment, so touched that he thought he might burst. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given him a gift like that, and here it was, coming from someone he’d not spoken to for years.

“Bernadetta,” he said. “Thank you…”

She flushed.

“I’m sorry it’s not prettier,” she said, “I just didn’t have any black threads left so I thought red might be your favourite... and I wanted to get it done before we docked in case I didn’t have more time to sew.”

Sylvain chuckled.

“Why do you always start with that, making excuses? It’s really nice,” he said. “I love it. I am going to keep it on me always.”

“Oh,” she said, embarrassed.

He sensed an opportunity to praise her more, even if it would fluster her at the same time — conveniently, Sylvain’s favourite thing to do with impressionable young women.

“Here,” he said, and he untucked his shirt and dragged it over his head by the collar. He turned it inside-out and offered its neckline to Bernadetta. She was bright red, which Sylvain thought quite funny, because she was a married woman with a child on the way, but she took the shirt anyway, lacking cause to refuse. “Sew it to the inside breast. That way you know I love it enough to keep it with me.”

“Really?” Bernadetta wailed, but she capitulated just as fast, sighing at him and sitting down on the deck. He sat down with her, and despite the nippy air he felt warmed by the small smile on her lips, as that smile meant he won. Bernadetta fished a small pouch from her satchel, a brown leather one that had been cut in the shape of a hedgehog, its black eyes made of small, shiny beads and its nose an embroidered button. She produced a needle and thread from within it, and upon taking the whale tail embroidery back from him, she began to stitch it into the breast of his shirt as a patch, the edges comprised of tiny, even X crosses.

“You’re so weird,” she told him as she sewed, her expression screwed up in concentration.

“Me?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But we all miss you a lot, you know. I was really happy when Edie said I’d be traveling with you. You were always so nice to me, and it made me really sad when you decided to leave. Getting to see you again was so nice...”

His heart! Sylvain nodded, a little guiltily, and he pulled his shirt back on. From the outside, he could see the tiny pricks of where she’d sewn through from the other side. He ran his finger over it and felt the slight bumps of the thread. It felt fortifying, in an odd way. Bernadetta peered at him.

“Why did you leave?” she asked.

“Uh,” Sylvain trailed. “I don’t know, Bern. It was complicated.”

“I know,” she said. “But I guess I just never understood. Nobody wanted to talk about it, and it was so awkward I just never knew how to ask, and you were just... gone.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”

She looked at him, as if expecting an explanation or at least a better apology, but Sylvain wasn’t sure how to give it to her. He didn’t like to think about the time he was away, but somewhere along the way he’d also forgotten that he’d been missed, too. He thought maybe they didn’t care about him as much as he cared about them. He thought maybe he didn’t care about them much if he was willing to leave them so easily, but then one of those friends put a whale tail made just for him over his heart and he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. Why _had_ he left? It was confusing.

He didn’t like to think about it, but suddenly it was there, and it felt like the ship was sinking under his feet, threatening to drown him and put him out of his misery.

“Hey Bern?” Sylvain asked. “Remember that thing you used to say? All the time, about how you hated yourself. You still do?”

Bernadetta fixed him with a curious look, and it seemed to him that she hadn’t thought about that for a long time. Still, she mulled it over. Did she hate herself?

“No,” Bernadetta said, finally. “It was always a lot more about everyone hating me, though...”

“Nobody ever hated you,” Sylvain said. “Not even a little bit.”

“I know,” she said. “I just didn’t believe it. But it’s okay now, you know? I might not be the greatest wife or the best lord, but I do my best, and everyone seems happy with that... I have a lot of friends, and even if I don’t get to see them very often with everyone being so far apart, I know they care about me...”

She looked him over, concerned. His chest tightened.

“Why? Do you... uh... are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said, blinking furiously, but it was too late. A hot tear rolled off his cheek and he gasped, thumbing at it immediately. He could try to pretend it never happened at all, but Bernadetta had already seen.

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, oh no! Are you okay? Did I say something wrong? Don’t cry! I’m not very good with crying, and um, especially not you... manly... types... _what do I do?”_

Sylvain laughed despite the massive frog in his throat. It was confusing to feel so choked up, especially so suddenly.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Something must have gotten in my eye... a bug or something...”

Bernadetta fixed him with a doubting look, and she reached for his hands. Her archer’s fingers were marked with calluses but her touch was so tender it radiated concern. Sylvain drew a deep breath to steady himself. He was alright. False alarm, manhood intact.

“You can tell me if you want,” Bernadetta said. “You know, Caspar cries a lot. He just gets it all out so it doesn’t fester. He always feels a lot better that way.”

_Poor Caspar_, Sylvain thought, _getting sold out as a crybaby by his own wife._ He supposed that was a little bit cruel to think, too, but he felt deeply embarrassed to have nearly slipped.

“Nah, it’s just...” he trailed. She squeezed his hands, her grip surprisingly strong. He admitted: “I just really like the whale you made me, it’s very sweet.”

And maybe he hated himself a little, too, but didn’t know how to say it, at least not to someone he'd ever have to look in the eye again. Bernadetta held onto him, watching his face with those big, sad eyes and her mouth curved into a tiny, bracing smile.

“Okay. I’m glad you like it... and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” She hesitated, and she gave him another squeeze. “I don’t really know how to fix your problem, but I don’t think you should worry. I think you’re really good.”

“Good?” Sylvain repeated. He couldn’t help but laugh at that, just a short stab. “Thanks, Bern. Really. It’s good to hear that.”

“It’s the truth,” she said. “Even if you don’t believe it. Because I didn’t believe it about myself for a long time, either.”

She ran her thumb across his.

“You okay now?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

She kissed his cheek, swift and sweet, and then she stood up. Sylvain climbed to his feet, too, tucking his shirt back into his trousers. Bernadetta gave him one last concerned look and then glanced back out to the pretty water, which danced merrily as they navigated between the small islands and rocky outcroppings towards the port. The rocks seemed worn, endlessly beaten by the tides, but the trees stood right up to the water’s edge, immovable.

Sylvain thought about his friends.

If he never found Felix, or worse, if Felix didn’t want him, he felt assured that he would still have the Eagles, and that was the most relieving thing he’d thought for weeks.


	8. Board Games

Edelgard liked board games.

He’d found out when he'd heard Edelgard had a beautiful set of playing pieces, all hand-carved wood. The conversation he’d eavesdropped on describing it had been between two girls in the Black Eagles house, one of whom had played with Edelgard before, and the other who aspired to an invitation. Invitations, he gathered, were rare. You had to be the right person, or show the right aptitudes, or somehow end up on a list she was rumoured to have. Maybe you had to be vetted by Hubert, too. It was difficult to say. Everyone had a different theory.

Sylvain liked board games. It was, in Sylvain’s opinion, a fantastic opening, but he had no intention of sitting around the library or the study hall with his carved-stone set, waiting for Edelgard to notice him.

His strategy was much more direct.

“Hey,” he said, and Edelgard turned to look at him, her piercing lavender eyes fixed on his and boring directly into his soul. His confidence flickered but he stood fast, fully aware that Hubert seemed to smell his ulterior motives for the princess. This close, he liked how small she was, the top of her head just level with her shoulder. He decided getting his hands on the Imperial Princess was worth any risk.

“Hello,” Edelgard said, but it sounded a lot like _make your point._

“We should play together sometime.”

He gestured vaguely at the board game on the library table, but he didn't take his eyes off her when he did it. She appraised him some more, but unlike most girls, she didn't bother looking him up and down. Her eyes never went lower than the house pin on his lapel. Sylvain wondered if there was possibly that much to surmise just from his face alone.

“I’m interested,” Edelgard said, finally. “Tomorrow at three?”

He’d have to skip riding class. That was fine, he decided. He was already an excellent rider, a born horseman. He nodded.

“Tomorrow at three,” he agreed.

Hubert glared at him as if he were some slimy little toad. Sylvain smiled at him, too. Hubert was a looming, smirking fellow, and every time Sylvain had seen him around the monastery, he'd been doing his looming-and-smirking routine over Edelgard’s shoulder. Despite knowing they were of a similar age, Sylvain imagined that Hubert had never been a child. He looked so sinister that he had, at one point, simply been a smaller version of his current self.

Even so, if Hubert’s presence was intended to be intimidating, it wasn’t necessary — not because it wasn’t effective, but because Edelgard was plenty intimidating on her own.

“Right here?” he asked.

“That would do. See you tomorrow, Sylvain,” Edelgard said, and she turned away.

She knew his name. Sylvain felt a pleasant curl of intrigue in his belly, but he was left with nothing else to say or do but walk out to return tomorrow. _A date,_ he thought gleefully, _with the ice princess!_

It was not a date.

Sylvain showed up with flowers and a bottle of wine and his own playing set, just in case she did not deign to share hers with just anyone, and was promptly shown to a seat by Hubert, who seemed to think the whole thing was very funny. Edelgard did, too, but she put an even finer point on it, eyeing the flowers in his arms and smiling.

“Are those for me?” She asked.

“Well, they're certainly not for Hubert,” Sylvain replied. “Hubert, you look cheery, as always.”

“Hello, Sylvain,” Hubert replied, a purr of amusement low on his throat.

Amused, Edelgard took the flowers, and she admired them for a moment before passing them to Hubert, who immediately set them aside. He hung them with the heads hanging off the edge of the table so the blossoms wouldn’t be crushed. He was thoughtful, at least.

“And the wine?” she asked.

“Well enough for three,” Sylvain said.

Sylvain set down the box with his playing pieces, and he fetched a trio of glasses from one of the cupboards. Edelgard busied herself with setting up the board. The wooden tokens in her set were polished so brightly that they could have been made of tiger’s eye. Sylvain watched her set up all four corners of the board as he poured them glasses.

“Is there a fourth player coming?”

“You are the fourth player,” Edelgard said, without taking her eyes off her task. Her long hair fell over her shoulders as she bent over it, the tails of her silk ribbons falling against her cheeks. “Hubert plays twice.”

“Why? So he can double his chance to win?”

“I also like to have a second so when we play with a third person, I can flank both sides of Lady Edelgard,” Hubert replied.

“Nonsense. Don’t tease, Hubert, he doesn’t know you’re joking,” Edelgard said, and she put a hand on Hubert’s shoulder briefly. In that second, Hubert glanced up at her, and the reverence in his eyes made the fine hairs on the back of Sylvain’s neck stand up in fear. Edelgard continued: “I promise you that he’ll spend most of the time playing against himself, figuring out new strategies. I like a fourth player because I like to work for my wins.”

“I can work with that,” Sylvain said.

Sylvain set down their glasses before them and fetched his own. The candlelight of the library danced off the baubled rims of the glasses, and every time Edelgard looked at him, he could only see the little orange stripe of the flames reflected in her eyes. Hubert sat back from the table, eyes fixed on his pieces, face in shadow as he pondered his opening moves.

And so they started, pieces moving across the board one after the other. Sylvain had thought that Hubert’s presence would be the biggest threat to his hard-on, but Edelgard approached the task of eliminating his pieces with a terrifying efficiency. Surely, a girl like her wasn’t just cool in personality — she possessed a razor-sharp intellect that made Sylvain feel like he was being seen through.

She trounced him in no time, long before Hubert could finish beating himself and move onto either of them. It came so quickly that Sylvain felt like she’d driven a practice lance directly into his midsection, leaving him embarrassed and unhorsed. She didn’t even relish it. Just like that, she swept the board clean and set up again for another round.

_Beginner’s luck,_ he decided, before he was swiftly trounced another time.

They set up for a third. Once more she put him out to pasture, and then she flicked her gaze to him.

“You’re not going easy on me, are you?” she asked, a little wryly.

“No, lady,” Sylvain replied. Honesty was probably the better policy, and probably better to butter her up, anyway. With his initial guesses proved wrong, he had to hope she was the kind who just wanted to be flattered. “You’re really talented. I’m impressed.”

“You’re decent,” she said. “But you’re careless. You could have avoided these losses several times if you were just paying attention to your own pieces and not to everything going on around you.”

_Everything going on around you_ was, of course, an extremely measured way of saying he was spending too much of his attention on her physique. She wasn’t wrong, either, but then Edelgard decided to show him, pretending to move her piece across the board.

“When I moved here...” she mimed it. “You did this. If you’d looked at the rest of pieces, you could have seen that I was setting up this maneuver.” She mimed again, glancing at him to make sure he was paying attention, which he was. “If you’d done this....” She mimed once more. “Do you see what I am telling you?”

He got the impression that they were not playing anymore, and that this was no mere friendly explanation from one practiced player to a casual one. He was being sized up, but he wasn’t sure why she would go to the effort. There was a feeling he got when women were paying attention to him — really, truly paying attention, not just nodding along or trying to please him — and it felt like Edelgard _was_, but it didn’t feel complimentary, or like they were connected.

Instead it felt like he was being appraised at market, like a show pony. He half expected her to open his mouth with one firm thumb and inspect his teeth.

Edelgard looked at him expectantly, obviously wanting some feedback on her admittedly-excellent observations of his skill and attentions, and Sylvain wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Why did you invite me, if I’m not any good?”

“Pardon me?” Edelgard asked.

“I just mean that — obviously you knew you were going to beat me, probably from the first move. You had it all figured out from the moment I walked in the door. Why did you agree to play with me?”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I _didn’t_ know I’d win.”

“Everyone says you have a list,” Sylvain said. She looked at him blankly, and so he insisted: “To play against you, you need to be really good, _really_ exceptional, and that you won’t even issue an invitation unless you think it’s worth your while...”

And then she laughed, good-natured. Sylvain felt immediately stupid, and yet deeply intrigued. He gazed at her from across the table as she ruled herself calm again, wiping the board empty once more.

“There’s no such thing,” she said, amusement in her voice. “I think everyone is afraid to play with me, so no one ever asks. I was just so pleased to get an invitation.”

“You don’t care that I’m bad?” Sylvain replied.

“You’re actually not that bad,” she said. “You’re just not living up to your potential.”

It had struck Sylvain as a funny thing to say, but it was also something he’d never forgotten, not even once.

He vowed to get better.

It went like that for four weeks, and through the start of the new semester. Every free day, they would meet at three in the library and play a few rounds, and slowly but surely, Sylvain learned to dance around her techniques and build up a better strategy.

His intention towards seducing her was subsumed by some different reason to see her every week. For one, seducing her was going to be a long game, as any fantasy about breaking into an ice queen’s heart had to account for the immense walls she'd erected around herself, so he had to be patient. And second, he started to enjoy their games, and the feeling of being pushed to think a little harder, or try a little more. He even started to get used to Hubert, and all the looming and smirking felt more and more harmless the longer it went on. He also noticed other members of the house reaching out to him more, even outside of base politeness. He snagged a date with Dorothea. He read Bernadetta’s weird stories. He’d sparred with Caspar, and had a few rousing debates with Ferdinand, and taught Petra a few pick-up lines. He’d even managed a record-breaking thirty-second conversation with Linhardt. He hadn’t even minded being scolded by the new professor, as it felt nice to know someone was looking out for him.

Some of his housemates questioned why he was suddenly spending so much time with the Black Eagles, but as far as Sylvain was concerned, ingratiating himself with Edelgard had only brightened his time at the Officer's Academy. He invited Ingrid and Felix along to their board game dates, and once he even tried Dimitri. No one was interested. Their loss, Sylvain supposed.

And then, one day, as Edelgard narrowly defeated him in a key moment, she dropped a statement on him that nearly made him tip his wine.

“Have you ever considered switching houses? I think the Black Eagles have a lot to offer you.”

“Why?” he replied, after a healthy skeptical pause. He hadn’t thought any of this was leading in _that_ direction. “I mean, I’m sure that new professor of yours could teach me things old Hanneman couldn’t dream of, but I don’t know what _you_ see in me. You’ve got your fill of nobility, and you’ve already got some promising talent for cavaliers... trust me, I’m flattered, but why?”

Edelgard paused, as if flummoxed that anyone would turn her down. Sylvain frowned and set down his glass.

“Forget about what you can offer the house,” she said. “Just think about what you want.”

That was such a strange suggestion that Sylvain must have flinched, because Edelgard looked at him with concern.

"What I want?" he repeated.

Sylvain hadn’t known he’d wanted for anything, but suddenly, just like that, the question of what he really wanted consumed him for the next week. He knew what he wanted. He just hadn't ever considered _having_ it.

It hadn’t taken much to pluck up the courage to ask the new professor about switching into her class. After all, she did wear some very eye-catching stockings on her long, svelte legs — any man could ask looking at those. She’d accepted him, too, perhaps oblivious to his reputation, and though the professor gave no indication of it, Sylvain got the sneaking suspicion that Edelgard had said something. It went so smoothly that Sylvain thought he was being led into a trap, and then he walked away from the ask with signed transfer papers in his hand and an odd lightness in his heart.

He would start the new school week with the Black Eagles.

Actions, however, always had consequences.

Felix descended upon him hours later, cornering him in the courtyard. Sylvain had hardly managed a hello before Felix latched onto the front of his shirt, so tight that Sylvain was momentarily pulled in. Their noses bumped and Felix was so riled up that he didn't even seem to notice.

“Is it true?” he demanded.

“Is what true?” Sylvain replied, tilting away so Felix wasn’t breathing in his face. “Whatever that girl said, I didn't––”

Felix pushed Sylvain back into a hedge. While not exactly painful, it certainly was not comfortable, and Sylvain let out a yowl somewhere between discomfort and surprise. Felix held him there. Felix must have heard somewhere about the transfer and then decided to jump on it before the moment passed. Felix never stewed.

“What's wrong with you?” Sylvain demanded, but his thoughts about transferring felt somewhat eclipsed by the branches digging into his lower spine.

“You can’t be this stupid,” Felix hissed. “Jumping ship just because the new professor is a pretty girl?”

Why did Felix always have to be such a dick about it, skimming the surface and pretending whatever came off the top was the truth of it all? Being thought of as shallow only rubbed from people who knew better.

“When did you stop caring about what matters?” Felix demanded.

That made him really annoyed.

“Get off me,” Sylvain warned.

“It’s always girls with you! Why am I even surprised?”

There wasn’t likely to be any talking him down. Felix held fast to his beliefs, and the only way to convince him otherwise was to leave him alone and hope he thought about it more on his lonesome. Sylvain tried to wrench Felix off, but when Felix held tighter, the only sensible thing left to do was _make_ him let go.

Sylvain ducked and drove his head forward, and he connected that sweet spot on the crest of his head with Felix’s face. Felix gasped in pain, and though he only let go with one hand, it was enough for Sylvain to get himself out of the hedge, at least. They tussled a bit, Felix just a little too stunned to retaliate properly, but Felix held on with that last hand.

(_He should change from a focus in brawling to a focus in reason_, Sylvain thought. Especially after taking a headbutt like that.)

Felix clutched his nose, great droplets of blood rolling off the underside of his hand. His cuff was already sullied. Sylvain sighed. _Oops._ Maybe he went a little far. Or maybe he didn’t — maybe that was just what Felix needed to get the point. Felix was perhaps the second most relentless person he knew, after all, maybe now third with Edelgard in play.

“You _know_ I’d rather talk than brawl,” Sylvain said with a sigh. “If you’d just let go when I _asked_ you to...”

Felix said nothing, eyes fluttering closed. Finally, he let go of Sylvain entirely to nurse his poor nose, tilting his head back to avoid staining the front of his shirt. _Okay_, Sylvain thought, watching red bloom even deeper across his cuffs. _Definitely a little far._

“Is it broken?” Sylvain asked, concerned.

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Felix said, moving a mouthful of something around his mouth in the process. He spit it out a second later, a great gob of blood hitting the cobblestone. All these years and he hadn’t learned to not tip his head back. _Definitely not brawling material_, Sylvain lamented. Felix added: “But I meant what I said. You can’t just turn your back on us.”

“I'm not,” Sylvain said, pointedly. “I just changed classes. It's not that big of a deal."

"Then you haven't thought about what you're doing at all," Felix said.

"I have," Sylvain insisted. Not that he needed to say it out loud and confirm Felix's opinion of him, but he'd been so consumed by the prospect of changing houses that he'd barely been able to jerk himself off for the past week. "And this is funny to me, because I thought _you’d_ be the one to transfer. You’re always going on about how you can’t stand being around him, and all.”

“So much so that I feel ill sitting in the same classroom!” Felix declared. His eyes darted away.

“Then why stay?”

“It's _complicated_,” Felix said. He sighed angrily and added: “I just thought we'd be together in this.”

It _was_ complicated. Sylvain sighed, too.

“Maybe we would have been,” he said. “But I was thinking about what the classes offered me, and I just thought... I’m going to spend my whole life in Faerghus, answering to Dimitri. I thought I’d spend this one year figuring out who I am beyond all that. And yeah, the girls _are_ different from Faerghus girls.”

“Changing houses just to chase a skirt is a lot of effort,” Felix said. “Even for you.”

Always with those barbs. He just couldn’t let anything go.

“Yeah,” Sylvain said, dryly. “You know people in the Black Eagles aren’t like us, right? They might argue or have little disagreements, but man. In a couple weeks I’ve had more people ask about me than I think I have in all of my life in Faerghus, and I don’t even start classes with them until Monday.”

“That’s just because they don’t know you,” Felix said. “They think you're fun because you're always smiling and making friends, but they don’t have history together like _we_ do.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

Felix’s mouth bobbed open to reply, but nothing came out; there really wasn’t an argument against that, in Sylvain’s mind, and he had known Felix long enough to know anyone would want an escape if they could. What did history matter, anyway, if it just brought you down? Sylvain swallowed his breath and fished a handkerchief from his pocket — it felt a little unfortunate to sully the fine cotton and pale pink embroidered flowers with bodily fluids, but hey, that was probably inevitable. Sylvain held it up, and Felix glowered at him.

“You done?” Sylvain asked.

“I think it stopped,” Felix replied, gingerly dropping his hands. A little trickle rolled down his upper lip. The two waited a moment, and nothing more came out. Clotted, maybe just barely. Felix rolled his lips over his teeth experimentally, and then swiped across them with the tip of his tongue. Nothing else busted up.

Sylvain approached like he might approach a stray dog, and Felix tensed up like he might snap again, but he stayed very still when Sylvain started to gently wipe his face up. He cupped Felix's cheek to steady him. Felix wore his anger just under the surface of his skin, and he was furiously warm against Sylvain's palm.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything to you before,” he said. “But I_ was_ going to tell you all tonight. I wasn’t going to leave without a word, you know. And it doesn’t mean we aren’t going to be friends anymore — I’ve still got the same room, we’re still in the same monastery with the same training grounds and dining hall and marketplace. It’s just classes and weekend missions, that’s all.”

Felix narrowed his eyes. Sylvain mopped the handkerchief along Felix’s mouth with a bit of a smile tugging at his lips.

“It’s probably better people think I changed because of the girls, anyway,” he added. “Can’t let people think I’m unhappy with Dimitri, right? Or that I’m not ready to be Margrave or anything.”

Felix reached for the handkerchief. Sylvain let him have it, and Felix pulled away from him. Felix spit into it and then started carefully wiping at the mess closer to his nose. Sylvain sighed. If the girl who gave it to him asked if he still carried her favour, he’d have to come up for an excuse as to what happened to it. Maybe he could say he was wounded in battle, and her handkerchief had stoppered the blood, saving his life. Yeah, that would work.

“Yes,” Felix said, finally. “While you’re having fun with your big friendly house of delicate minds, the rest of us are spread thinner trying to keep everything together.”

"At least I'll be having fun," Sylvain replied.

Felix rolled his eyes.

Sylvain understood that he was shirking some sort of duty. But it seemed ludicrous to give up an opportunity like this, especially when it was just a year. He’d be back in Faerghus before long to settle into his boring, predestined life.

Felix, Dimitri and the rest could wait.

The news of Sylvain's decision would take time to spread. It was no surprise to Sylvain that Felix would know quickly — it occurred to him in hindsight that his week of hemming and hawing over the decision would have not eluded Felix's uncanny perception — but his most important task after was to prepare for everyone else finding out.

The concept did not thrill him. For a few paranoid moments, he contemplated going to the professor and taking it back, but pride stopped him. He would just have to endure.

Fortunately for him, most of their house had barely gotten to know him, identifying him only as the son of House Gautier, an upperclassman, and/or the guy who offered to show all the new girl students around. Few of them batted an eye at Sylvain leaving, partially because it was all still the same monastery and they were still bound to see him (or have to deal with him) regardless of whose classes he was attending. Some of them might have felt a mild bit of relief to not have him disrupting class — there was an unfounded rumour that he liked to drop pens just to look up girls’ skirts, and regardless of the truth of the matter, Sylvain was sure some would prefer he be somewhere else. Others might have felt inclined to gossip — after all, there was something to be inferred when the philandering heir of Gautier chose to leave the Crown Prince's house.

There was also no formal announcement, and little acknowledgement from the faculty. He was dragged into Seteth's office for a fraught discussion about his future, but Sylvain brushed that off. The faculty knew the letters would come within the month anyway as various figureheads in the Gautier family wrote to their house’s heir with various complaints, pleas and admonishments. Some would come from House Fraldarius, too, and perhaps a few from Galatea. Changing houses was for commoners, not noblemen with a decorated history or a destiny in direct service to the future king.

Sylvain knew no one was going to like it. Sylvain didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, someday he would inherit his title, and then he would marry some girl and fuck her every night until she bore him a Crest baby, and then he would live out the rest of his days in service to his homeland and his king. The people who criticized his petty school rebellion would win in the end anyway, so they would have to deal with it for now.

But his closest friends, at least, required some care. He called Felix, Ingrid and Dimitri together to break the news formally, and then he ended up passing Annette in the hall and invited her too, as he would have liked to build a friendship with her. Annette brought along Mercedes for some reason, Dimitri was shadowed by Dedue, and Ashe happened to be in the classroom, so Sylvain just let them all join too. Why not? He gathered them around him and felt quite important to be at their center, even knowing he was about to get ganged up on.

“So,” he said, hopping up to sit on Hanneman’s lectern desk. He paused, somewhat dramatically, though only because he had to stop and twist and check that he hadn’t disrupted Hanneman’s inkwell all over his seat. All clear. “I’ve joined the Black Eagles. Classes start tomorrow. Any questions?”

“_What_?” Ingrid said.

“I’m joining the Black Eagles. Classes star—“

Ingrid closed her eyes, raised a stern hand, and corrected herself as firmly as she could muster: “Why?”

“I have to say I’m surprised,” Dimitri remarked, before Sylvain could answer. “I didn’t think there was a reason to transfer...”

“Save your breath,” Felix said, from the back of the group. “He’s transferring because the new professor is a pretty girl. It’s as shallow as it gets.”

Oof. Not a bad cover, though, because Sylvain certainly wasn’t about to sit there and explain that their head of house and one of his dearest friends had made him feel stifled to the point of bursting. His actual reason suddenly seemed a little naive, however — reading the room, he didn’t think extolling the virtues of the Black Eagle house would go over well, and he certainly didn’t want them to think they weren’t also lovely, enjoyable people by admitting he wanted a change of scene.

“I don’t understand,” Annette says. “You changed houses because the professor is pretty?”

Sylvain shrugged.

“Maybe she doesn’t float your boat, Annette, but you’ll understand someday.”

Annette gave a long and strangled annoyed sound. Mercedes shook her head, slow and unimpressed. Sylvain knew he was already getting on her bad side, which was a shame, because he would have liked to get to know her and see if she was more fun than her matronly shawl and prayer-at-the-hour ways let on. (It was also tremendously funny when she showed up to class having forgotten to button her blouse, but he wasn’t about to stick around to see if she did it again.)

“I know it’s shitty for me to tell you all after I made the choice, but I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, because we’re still all going to be friends, and see each other all the time, and all of that,” Sylvain promised. “I think the only real difference is that I’m going to be fighting against you at the annual Battle in a few months, but...” He shrugged. “I think we can all live with one little skirmish.”

Dimitri sighed.

“While I wish your reasons were better, I do hope you get something useful out of your education,” he said, relenting, but there was something in his tone that seemed deeply discomfited. “And I suppose when we beat you soundly at Gronder, we’ll welcome you back with open arms... and minimal fun at your expense.”

Wouldn’t happen, Sylvain knew. Not necessarily a defeat, as that was perfectly likely given the way Dimitri got on the battlefield, but Sylvain was certain that plenty of fun would be had at his expense. Dimitri wouldn’t tease him at all because he had no identifiable sense of humour, but the others would savage him in a heartbeat.

Whatever. He was just glad to not have hurt Dimitri’s feelings.

“It’s a deal,” Sylvain said. “Blue Lions beats the Eagles at Gronder Field, I’ll come back.”

He could see Felix weighing their chances in his head. Dedue just nodded, stalwart as always, and wished Sylvain good luck. Ashe just looked at him blankly, and when Sylvain gave him a confused look — why even bother staying to hear this? — Ashe nodded too and wished him luck as well. Oh. Well, Sylvain wasn’t going to turn that down.

“And I’m still going to eat with you all in the dining hall,” Sylvain said. “So Mercedes, dinner? You and me, tomorrow?”

“Let’s invite everyone,” Mercedes said, sweetly. “We can all eat together.”

Sure, that worked too. He was also fairly certain he’d made himself look like enough of a fool for one evening, so he hopped off the desk, leaving whatever Hanneman had left open mostly undisturbed.

“Sure! So that’s that, then,” he said. Nobody moved. Sylvain stepped forward and clapped a hand to Dimitri’s shoulder, and though he let his hand fall quite heavily, Dimitri scarcely even budged, as though he were made of stone. Sylvain met Dimitri’s bright blue eyes with a warm smile. “We’re good, right?”

“All is well,” Dimitri agreed. “I wish I could change your mind, or that I understood why, but I appreciate you telling us.”

Sylvain shrugged.

“Least I can do, for an old friend. Catch you tonight for training?”

“Of course,” Dimitri said.

Sylvain reached to his lapel and unclasped his class pin, and he offered it to Dimitri. Dimitri looked at it and then shook his head, holding a hand up in refusal.

“Keep it,” Dimitri implored. “You’re always going to be one of us.”

“Thanks,” Sylvain said.

An awkward silence settled on them all, and Sylvain felt all eyes on him, watching, waiting. Ingrid seemed to be stewing furiously, but he felt safer talking to her in private later than inviting any criticism now, and Felix maintained a barely bridled disappointment. Dimitri’s affable smile seemed positively thrilled by comparison. For a moment, Sylvain wondered why he had even hesitated to transfer. He’d known these three for an entire lifetime. They could stand to not share classes with him for a year, especially if they were going to treat the whole affair like a funeral instead of as an opportunity for him.

“Well,” Sylvain said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

They parted for him to pass, and he walked out, first like a dog slinking away from a henhouse, and then with a straighter back, with more confidence. He took a hard left at the door and walked a hundred paces to the Black Eagles’ main classroom. The doors were open to the fresh air, so he leapt into the center of the doorway and whistled. A dozen of his new classmates were inside, sat at the tables with their backs to the door, and a dozen heads swivelled to look at who was making all the ruckus.

“I’m home!” he bellowed.

“Sylvain,” Edelgard admonished. “This is a study group. Take a seat if you’d like to get a head start, otherwise I’ll get you acquainted with your new schedule first thing tomorrow morning.”

Sylvain grinned and pulled up a seat, sliding in right next to Bernadetta, who nervously edged her chair away a little.

In telling his friends, the biggest leap had been taken and accomplished. Sylvain assumed that would be the hardest part, and that it would all be smooth sailing from there.

He had never been more wrong.


	9. Felix

They docked in Varley’s small port first thing the next morning. Sylvain was glad to see land. He had exhausted himself of nostalgic school stories staying up late with Bernadetta the night before, and Bernadetta had fallen asleep with her head on his lap, curled up like a child and snoring like a bear. It was deeply uncomfortable, and he didn't like being trapped in one place with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him, but after all her kindnesses to him, the least he could do was let her sleep unbothered.

Before he could set off, he had three remaining tasks to attend to before he went to find Felix.

The first was to return Bernadetta to her husband, and so in the early hours of that morning, as soon as the anchor dropped and the sailors hoisted the ship in close enough to lash it to the docks, Sylvain roused his friend and helped her gather her things. She walked as if still asleep, so he let her lean on him as he guided her up the ladder out of the sleeping quarters and onto the deck, where she could doze a little longer while they waited for Caspar. Disembarking was a relief, even if the ground felt frighteningly firm compared to the rolling waves. Despite the short trip, he'd quickly gotten used to walking in a certain way to keep his balance against the pitching of the ship, and it made him look forward to being back in the saddle.

Unloading the horses was his second task, and it was an ordeal in and of itself, as it was no easier to make a horse walk up a steep ramp than it was to get them to go down, and it took an hour to convince Horse in particular, who dug her heels in and balked at any effort. Sylvain tried all manners of coaxing and physical force, and he even attempted reason (“You’ll just die in here!”) and pleas (“I want out of this situation just as much as you do!”) but in the end, what did the trick was scaring the shit out of the old nag, prompting her to bolt up the ramp and onto the deck, where the poor bewildered creature scared the shit out of Bernadetta in turn, and then _both_ had to be calmed down. Sylvain thought that out of the three of them, he had suffered the worst damage to his nerves, but he didn’t say as much, as competitions of suffering never seemed to work well with girls or animals.

The third task was the most asinine. Once on shore, all packed up and ready to go, Sylvain said to his detachment:

“Well, everyone, thanks so much for your service and for getting me so far, but I think I can take it from here.”

It did not go over well, but as their captain it was his call, and they knew as much. Sylvain saw them to the road, where they and four of the five pack horses prepared to march back to Enbarr, a six days’ journey. Sylvain thought it just as well. Even if Edelgard would be livid, Sylvain figured he knew Felix better than anyone, and he would be saving her some hazard pay. If Felix saw a battalion, he’d assume they were there to drag him back to Enbarr by hook or by crook, and he’d take them all down to prevent it if he had to. _No, it's better to go alone,_ Sylvain thought.

He supposed he could have let them go before they sailed up the coast, but Sylvain also liked to keep more than a single day’s ride between him and Hubert. This way, he had at least six days’ head start, and if Edelgard was pissed about it, she would only have herself to blame. Sylvain had learned from the best, after all, though he knew turning around a battalion didn’t come close to posing as a mere schoolgirl in order to overthrow the church.

So finally, returning to the first task, he and Bernadetta rode into town and met Caspar and his men on its outskirts. Caspar ran to meet them, foolhardy and heedless of horses not taking kindly to being rushed, and when Bernadetta slipped from the saddle he gathered her right up into his arms. She shrieked as Caspar spun her around, the two of them looking like a couple of kids rather than dignified lords.

“Caspar!” Bernadetta moaned, face flushed as she was plastered in kisses, and she insisted upon being put down right after. “Don’t grab me like that...”

But once her feet were on the ground properly, she caressed his face and murmured some nickname and Caspar laughed and peppered her with even more kisses. It was a bit much for Sylvain, a person who had truthfully never been on the receiving end of that kind of enthusiasm, but he also wasn’t about to start being jealous of anyone married to Caspar.

“What was that nickname?” Sylvain asked.

“Short King,” Caspar said, proudly.

“Huh,” Sylvain said. It sounded like an inside joke he didn’t want to be in on. Even so, when Caspar grinned at him, he felt himself smiling too. It was hard to fault the guy’s enthusiasm. Sylvain imagined that if he ever found someone he could give a shit about and be given a shit for in equal measure, he might hack across the land just to sweep her up in hugs and kisses, too.

“Thank you so much for bringing her back home, Sylvain,” Caspar said. “It means a lot, I was pretty worried about her making the trip, so I’m glad you turned up when you did. How’ve you been? What brought you back to Enbarr?”

Sylvain felt there were too many sentiments to properly address there, so he just said: “You’re welcome. It was nice to catch up.”

Bernadetta beamed at him and then looked to Caspar.

“Maybe... maybe we can get dinner together?” she asked.

“Oh!” Caspar said. “Yeah! Sylvain, can I buy you dinner? It’s the least I can do.”

Sylvain felt tempted to decline, antsy at the prospect of getting back on the road towards where Felix had been seen last, but his stomach growled and he hadn’t seen Caspar in too long, either, and he could do well to catch up. Plus, he was broke save for the allowance from Edelgard for the road, and he’d sent most of that with the battalion. A hot meal on someone else’s gracious dime could be nice before disappearing into the wilderness. He wanted a drink, too.

“I’d love that,” he said.

It turned out to be a good choice on his part, as it gave him a few more hours with them, squeezed around a tiny table in the middle of a very crowded inn, eating fried mushrooms and fish baked in a salt casing and potatoes smashed with butter and cream. They drank a bottle of wine, reminisced about school days, and toasted to Sylvain’s good luck finding Felix. It filled Sylvain with optimism and resolve, knowing that even if he didn’t find Felix, or if Felix refused him, he could just journey back east and knock on Caspar and Bernadetta’s door and carouse his sorrows away. What was the worst that could happen? He had to hope that Felix, at very least, would not _kill_ him. He still knew Felix and felt confident in that.

In Sylvain’s opinion, there was precious little better in the world than being known. As humbling and occasionally humiliating as it could be, there was an almost perverse pleasure in listening to Caspar order a wine, and years later, recall what Sylvain preferred to drink. It was nice, too, to have Bernadetta quietly lean in and tell him she would be writing a womanizer character in her next story, and to not worry, because she would be making him a fully-realized, complicated and nuanced character, as she had been inspired by him. It was heartening to have Caspar thank him, genuinely and from the bottom of his heart, _over and over again_, for seeing his wife safely back to him.

It made him feel hopeful that Felix was still _known_ to him, too.

On the steps of the inn, cheeks flushed from wine and eyes watery, Bernadetta took him in a great big hug, and he smiled into her hair. When she pulled away, she brought a couple fingers to his chest and prodded the spot where the whale tail patch was.

“You come back safe,” she implored him. “And I’ll make you a proper one, with black thread.”

“Red, black, both do me just fine,” Sylvain grinned. He let her go and waved to them both and started walking down the street backwards so he could still see them. They waved too, and he cupped both hands to his mouth and shouted: “Black Eagles!”

Both laughed, and both returned in Caspar’s enthusiastic boom and Bernadetta’s timid shout: “Black Eagles!!”

Sylvain waved one last time and turned, walking down the street back towards his palfrey and Horse. With his back turned, he wiped another stray tear from one eye, smiling to himself and puffing up his chest. He had a long trip ahead of him, but he felt ready for it.

The high of friendship got Sylvain through the next day handily. On the long road from Varley’s port town and up into the Oghma mountains, his heart thrummed with the feeling that he had the option of never shovelling stalls or kicking shitty old men out the door ever again, should he so choose. He could go back to Enbarr and invite Edelgard and Hubert to play board games with him. He could ride up to Galatea and see Ingrid and beg her to forgive him for treating her so poorly, and then treat her like gold for the rest of their days for being such a patient friend to him. He could go to Varley and take a job logging and live out his naive rich-boy pastoral fantasies in the company of friends. He could throw his arm around Ferdinand and take him drinking, or beat down the Opera Company door and beg Dorothea for one more dinner date, or visit the School of Sorcery and sit with Annette and read for hours. He could go to Brigid and see Petra, and eat food so spicy he could feel it making its way through his innards and enjoy every minute of being giggled at by her. He could go to some stuffy research institute just to listen to Linhardt drone on about something arcane! He could lay in the grass in some field somewhere and watch Ignatz paint, he could see Lysithea and eat sweets with her for hours, or even visit that dog Lorenz and share bottles of wine and swap raunchy stories.

He could go anywhere. He could do anything!

He wasn’t sure when, exactly, he’d decided that his life was his own, but he did feel that he was breathing for the first time in years, and that it would surely put him back on track to enjoying his life. Nothing at all could stop him.

But first, he had to find Felix.

The mountains felt closer to home than anything he had passed through in Enbarr, and though they were more temperate and were home to denser trees, it was nice to see something more like Faerghus. The trees, just north enough to resist the turning of the seasons a few weeks longer, stood tall and thin, flanking each side of the road like guardians. He saw deer at dawn and dusk, and he saw a couple eagles’ nests. This late in the season, the fledgelings were learning to fly, climbing out of their massive basket-shaped nests and hopping from branch to branch before taking clumsy first flights. They were already full size, sometimes even slightly bigger than their parents — the tips of their wings were longer than the adults, to better catch themselves when they crash-landed on the mountain floor or on the road, which they often did. It also did wonders for Sylvain’s ego, seeing those majestic creatures wipe out, get back up and take off again.

(But also a little frightening, as a downed creature with a seven-foot wingspan could easily make his day miserable, and their parents were never too far behind. He had to steer both horses well clear of any downed birds, tempted as he was to get a better look.)

Early evening saw him and his horses into a small village nestled in the mountains, having simply followed the road to find it. The roads were rather empty, which surprised Sylvain, as trade had once flowed liberally across Fódlan through these arteries, but the roads were also not as well maintained as they used to be. Some parts had once been paved with stones, but people had carried away the stones at one point or another to build other things, leaving great crags in the surface, and Sylvain encountered a number of fallen trees that would have been tricky to pass with even a small cart. Sylvain could tell that whatever manorial lord had jurisdiction over this area had not been answering Imperial writs to repair them — if there had been a writ at all.

The village seemed decently maintained by its people, but it was so small that it did not even have a tavern. Upon inquiring after a place to stay, he was directed to a few families in the area that took in travellers. Just weeks ago, Sylvain might have picked a modest one, as they were the most likely to take him in dressed as he was, but with his splendid Adrestian cape and suit of armour, he called upon the finest of them. Fine was relative to a small mountain village, and they did not have a proper bed for him, but they took him in kindly. He offered them his sword for the night, fed and watered the horses and made a bed for himself on their kitchen floor by the stove for warmth. He stripped off his armour, knowing he would not be able to get much of it back on without assistance, and he introduced himself to the homeowner’s three daughters. They were all very pretty in a provincial sort of way, and he made a note of the prettiest one.

With lodging secured, he spent the better part of that evening knocking on doors to ask around about Felix; most of them_ knew_ about the midnight-haired man protecting the roads by preying on bandits, and though some had seen him as soon as three weeks ago, none knew where he might be living. Sylvain heard a lot of stories that night, and good ones at that. It seemed most people had a story to tell about the road conditions and how poor they had been just after the war, and how their mystery man and his mercenaries had cleaned it up. What had happened to the mercenaries, they didn't know, but it didn't matter. A lone man tasked with protecting them all was a much better story, anyhow, and Sylvain felt more confident about approaching Felix when he was alone.

Sylvain had the thought that he could simply set up camp by the road in hopes that Felix would patrol by and find him, but if Felix was traveling around the area quite a bit, that could take weeks on its own, and there was no telling if Felix would just spy him and turn back to avoid him. He thought he should carry on to Remire Village, which he felt was his best chance; the mountain folk had confirmed that Remire had been abandoned for the past decade or so, and Sylvain thought it likely that Felix would use the remaining buildings as a secluded base, especially if he had been living with mercenaries for a time. If he wasn’t there, there was also Garreg Mach — the ruins were barely a day’s ride, so he could check there next.

As the moon continued to rise, he plucked wild candytufts from the roadside and made his way back to his lodging, where he sweet-talked his way into the second-prettiest girl’s room. (He had discovered the prettiest shared a room with the third.) When he’d finished on her, he crept back downstairs and wrapped himself up in his bedroll on the kitchen floor. Sylvain wrote in his journal for a bit by the last embers of the stove, and then laid on his side with his hands stretched out to the coals for their warmth. He thought about the bed he had in Enbarr, and the bed he had in Garreg Mach, and the bed he had in Gautier manor, and how every one of them soundly beat sleeping in the hay, or in the dirt, or on the stone floor. He thought about Felix, living like a woodsman or camping out in a burned-out village, and he thought about the demons a man had to have to prefer that to the comfortable life he had been born to.

Sylvain didn’t know how he had lied to himself just weeks ago about wanting a life that felt punishing. He didn’t want to punish himself any longer.

He thought of Dimitri, too, even though he didn’t want to, and how for a time, Dimitri had wanted to sleep on the floor and eat scraps and throw away the life he had, too. At the time Sylvain had thought he was a madman, but now he thought maybe Dimitri had just been a warning sign. _Felix is not much different_, he thought. _Neither am I._

These Faerghus noblemen, he thought, seemed so prone to this. Their sense of self utterly torn asunder by their sense of duty, and in failing to meet it, their minds fell apart.

Sylvain didn’t think he was in pieces right then. Sometimes he felt so close it scared him, and he feared having it creep up on him more than anything, but he felt stable. Secure. It made him nervous to have Edelgard at his heels, aware of what he was doing, but she also felt like a bit of a safety net. She was patient. She'd been patient with him so many times.

As long as he had some sort of goal, no matter how short-term, he would be fine.

He fell into a fitful sleep. When he awoke in the morning, the family living in the house was stepping over him to make breakfast, and so he picked himself up and got out of their way. He chopped firewood and stacked it in the yard for their hospitality and ate a good breakfast of porridge and salted pork and eggs, and then saddled the horses and hit the road again.

Further north he crossed an old stone bridge over a river, where he saw a bear, a great black shaggy creature fishing in the river. As Sylvain stopped to look, the bear raised its head and looked at him, and then resumed wading in the river. He felt safe at a distance, particularly with horses with him, but as a boy, he’d heard stories of men and women caught alone in the woods and killed by black bears. One woman had survived only because she had two big dogs with her, and they had baited the creature long enough for her to make an escape, though she had lost vision in one eye and gotten a fair number of deep scars out of it. Sylvain had met her, actually, some years after the incident, when he was twelve or thirteen; the massive scars enveloping her head had been impressed upon his memory, as it had given her a fearsome and strange beauty he found as intimidating as it was intriguing.

Horse whickered. Sylvain couldn’t reach her to pat her, as she was tied behind his palfrey, but he turned in his seat to look at her.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “We’ll rest soon, but not around here. Won’t have you becoming bear meat, after all.”

Just east from that, having followed the river away from the bear, he dismounted and set the horses at the riverbank to drink and graze for a bit. He wandered along the edge of the woods as he did, mindful of bears and with a hand-axe at the ready should any pop up and give him trouble. He felt watched, anyway. The woods were bursting with life, though none of it seemed to want him there.

“Felix!” he called into the woods, into the riverbed, into the foothills of the mountains. He heard his voice echo amongst them. “Felix! If you’re listening, come out!”

He remembered being a boy in Fhirdiad castle, racing down the length of the halls and rapping on the door to the Fradalrius family’s quarters with both fists, calling for _Felix, Glenn, Felix, come on out and play_. He was scolded then, but now he was his own man and he could scream into the mountains and no one could tell him not to.

"Felix! Come out and play!"

There was, of course, nothing. Just the sounds of the woods and the water and the wind rustling in the trees. An eagle called in the distance, and Sylvain called Felix’s name again, just because.

“No luck, huh?” He said to Horse, as he double-checked the belts on her pack saddle. “But we’ll find him yet, even if it takes me weeks.”

He visited two other villages that day, and both also knew of Felix, though again only as some midnight-haired vigilante. One woman claimed to have seen him not two days prior, which was the most promising thing Sylvain had heard, and he had been very accommodating in thanking her for the clue. She'd also warned him about the road conditions: no one had maintained the roads into Remire since it had been burned out.

It didn't frighten Sylvain much. There was nothing between him and Felix but time.

When he arrived in Remire, he found it not entirely abandoned: nature had taken up residence in all forms. In just a decade, grasses had overgrown much of the surrounding farmland, and what structures had not been burned away entirely were overrun with weeds, the old wood rotting and the rooftops collapsed. Its new residents were woodland creatures — deer picking through the ruins, a hole to a rabbit warren that could have crippled a horse making a misstep, field-mice riding the stalks of grains that had grown wild after the fields had been left to seed. The loveliness of the ruins struck him, but so did its loneliness. It was a big place for one man to live in all alone.

Sylvain felt nervous. He thought about what he would do if Felix wasn't here, and then what he’d do if Felix _was_. He felt more nervous as he got deeper in, as he could see the smoke of a small cooking fire somewhere across the village. He supposed the deer and the rabbits did not spit-roast their grasses, so Sylvain tied up the horses and then pushed forward on foot, one hand raised to shade his eyes from the brilliance of the setting sun, the other clutching his hand-axe, just in case he was about to crash some random bandit’s dinner. The sun was beginning to set, bathing the place in golden light.

As he grew closer, he started to hear whistling on the still air, and he recognized it as an old Faerghus war song, one of the ones that Sylvain had sung on the war campaign and before battle, the same ones that his parents had sung, and their parents before them, and their parents before them, and on and on to good old days of Loog himself.

So he whistled back, just a few notes, and the whistler carried on a moment longer before stopping abruptly. Sylvain pressed on, winding around ruined buildings and stepping over the remains of garden fences. His heart beat like a hammer, and he felt sure of who he was about to find, but he could not be sure of how welcomed he’d be. He whistled again, carrying on, waiting to see if there would be a response. There was none, but it didn't concern him at all.

When he climbed the small hills to the upper levels of the village, he came to the steps of the old windmill. There he smiled and looked up at the man standing in the doorway. Felix stared back at him, sword drawn.

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “You forgot the rest, huh?”

“What?” Felix asked, looking somewhat stunned.

“The rest of the song,” he said. “It goes...” He whistled the next bit. “Right?”

“I know that,” Felix replied, bristling. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

Sylvain had been ready for a fight, but now he grinned. He set his axe down on the stairs and then put his hands on his hips, looking at Felix with an easy feeling overtaking his heart. He loved it when he got to take Felix unawares. It was a rare and precious thing, like a four leaf clover, or seeing a cardinal with its pretty feathers, or finding a girl that wasn’t the marrying type. Felix gawked at him. He looked as though he had been living out here for quite some time. Perhaps he’d forgotten how to talk to people.

“You’re not happy to see me?” Sylvain teased.

Felix hesitated. Sylvain watched him for a moment, still smiling, and he watched Felix’s expression go from ill-at-ease to something much lighter, something sweeter. Felix sheathed his sword and then strode to him, throwing an arm around Sylvain’s neck and gripping him in a powerful hug. Sylvain just laughed, and he put his arms around Felix in turn, and then Sylvain impulsively pressed a hard kiss to Felix’s cheek. Felix scoffed — about the most missed sound Sylvain had heard in years — and for a moment the two just embraced, relief swelling both of their hearts.

“To think I thought you’d be mad,” Sylvain muttered against Felix’s fur collar. It smelled exactly like he expected it to, given Felix’s living situation. He sighed into the fur anyway. “I never expected a hug of all things.”

Felix seemed to remember himself at that, pulling back, and Sylvain was forced to let go. Still, Felix lingered close, a hand on each of Sylvain’s shoulders, his grip firm.

“I got ahead of myself,” he said, a little defensive. He looked Sylvain up and down. “You look well.”

“As do you,” Sylvain said, “aside from the whole... living in a burned out village thing.”

“It’s quiet,” Felix replied. “I like quiet.”

It seemed lonely to Sylvain, quiet or not, but he laughed.

“Of course, of course... when did you not like quiet? Must be really nice out here, waking up every morning to the birds and the crickets and all...”

That was every single hospitable place in Fódlan outside of a major city wall, truthfully, but Felix nodded, still smiling.

“And cicadas,” he said. “Cicadas every night, and sometimes foxes...”

“Those sound awful.”

“They do!”

“Like screaming, not as good as wolf howl...” Sylvain trailed, finding himself grinning so much his cheeks hurt, and then he felt thoughtful. When was the last time…? “I haven’t heard wolves in years.”

“I miss them,” Felix said, “but I won’t live that far North, not anymore.”

Both of them paused, their smiles fading. Sylvain mourned that little moment, knowing it had fled before reality could sink its teeth in. For a moment the two stood in silence, savouring a last moment of peace. Sylvain drank in the sight of his friend. By all accounts, Felix _did_ look good. Maybe a little leaner in the face than he used to be, courtesy living off the land, but Sylvain imagined whatever was hidden under those layers of clothing was lean and efficient. He wore a shabby sea-blue coat with a great fur collar and a few leather armour pieces, all of which looked a little worse for wear. His hair had grown out oddly, and Sylvain wasn’t sure if it looked better or worse than the mess he’d worn on his head through their years in Fhirdiad during the war — it was just a different sort of mess, a shaggier mess.

But, at the very least, he looked happy, happier than Sylvain had seen him since childhood. His heart swelled a little, imagining that joy was just for seeing him.

“How long have you been out here?” Sylvain asked.

“A year,” Felix said. “I was a little more North for about a year before that, mopping up the mess that’d become of the roads going South... lots of refugees. Lots of bandits, and opportunists.”

“Our people,” Sylvain said, wincing a little. “Yeah. I heard.”

“Things are only getting worse,” Felix said, shaking his head.

“You think both of us abandoning our lands had anything to do with that?”

Felix fixed him with a frown. Sylvain felt punished for bringing it up.

“I was disinherited,” Felix said, pointedly. "Whatever my uncle is doing in Fraldarius, it's not my problem."

“Yeah,” Sylvain said.

He didn’t know what else to say. He _had_ abandoned his lands. Another beat of silence fell between them, ugly and impassable. Sylvain looked at Felix and Felix looked at Sylvain, and finally, Felix said: “There’s no saving them.”

“You think?” Sylvain asked. He felt surprised; he’d never thought it was _completely_ hopeless. “I think Edelgard will think of something eventually and it’ll turn out okay. I’m just not the guy good for that.”

Felix shook his head.

“Edelgard,” he repeated. “One person can’t make that much change. Not if the people don't want it.”

“You haven’t seen Enbarr,” Sylvain replied. “It’s pretty dramatic. I didn’t believe it myself until I saw it, but three, four years? It’s like magic.”

He could tell that Felix didn’t believe him, but didn’t want to say as much — his expression said it anyway. Sylvain felt a sudden desire to talk about literally anything else; hadn’t he come here not for Edelgard, but because he wanted to see his friend, to talk to his friend, to sit and chat with his friend, to _be_ with his friend? Just standing with Felix now made him feel all cozy and sentimental, and he wanted to embrace Felix and rub his stubble all over Felix’s cheeks until Felix yowled in protest and fought him off.

“Okay, forget Enbarr,” Sylvain said. “What’s going on? Can I take you to back to some village for dinner and wine? We can catch up.”

Felix laughed, opened his mouth to say something pithy, and then suddenly looked behind him. He rushed back inside. Sylvain followed, ducking through the low door. Felix had obviously been living in there, given the mix-and-match collection of furniture, but Felix was nowhere to be seen. Sylvain crossed right through and out the open back door. He found Felix crouched over a small cooking fire, stirring the contents of a round black pot. It smelled heavenly.

“Oh good, it didn’t burn,” Felix said. “I only made enough for me, though.”

“I’ll write ahead next time to let you know I’m coming,” Sylvain said. “I have some bread and cheese and stuff back with my horses; wanna split?”

“Deal,” Felix said.

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

Sylvain crossed back through the village, a lightness in his step.

He knew they were fine.

Sylvain had had more good dinners in the past three weeks than he’d had in the past three years, and though this one was made of more meagre ingredients than the kitchens of the Imperial Palace, it felt just as filling. Belly and heart both fit to burst, he sat across from Felix, scraping his bowl clean of the last smears of rabbit stew broth with a heel of bread. He kept looking up to Felix to check on him, as if he might have vanished into the aether while he wasn’t looking, and he could tell it was annoying Felix but he continued anyway. He couldn’t help it.

“So why did you come?” Felix asked.

“I wanted to see you. It’s been years, after all.” Sylvain paused. He wanted to be honest, too, but he didn’t want to let that spoil his mood, so he just shrugged and added: “And Edelgard wants to see you. She told me where you were, asked me to invite you to Enbarr.”

Maybe if he said it lightly, it would sound casual enough to not send Felix running for the hills, but nothing slipped by Felix, not when that business was concerned. Felix narrowed his eyes, and in the glow of the firelight, the deep grooves of his under-eyes cast a long shadow, making him look much more cross than Sylvain thought he was.

“You came all the way here for that?” Felix asked. “What made you think I’d come?”

“I thought you’d say no," Sylvain confessed. "I just came to see you anyway.”

Felix raised an eyebrow at him, but Sylvain saw that tiny smile, too, catlike and pleased. Still, Felix shook it off and said: “Well, you’ve seen me. Go back to your master.”

Sylvain rolled his eyes. He had known Felix long enough to find these prickly episodes charming, and instead Sylvain leaned in closer, elbows on his knees, to gaze at Felix across the fire.

“What if I want to see you a little longer?” he asked, grinning.

“As if you don’t have a busy job running errands for the Emperor,” Felix replied. He made a gesture like brushing Sylvain away, though Sylvain still didn’t buy it for a second.

“I can stay as long as I’d like,” Sylvain said. “But if I’m interrupting you, well... I wouldn’t want to impose, seeing as you’re super busy and everything.”

Felix scoffed and give him an appraising glance-over.

“It’s not a _problem_, it just means I’ll need to do hunting for two of us, and it’s more firewood, and cooking oil. And you’re not even dressed for any of this — look at you, look at that cape, it’s like you’re on a royal tour. You're not wearing half your armour. Ridiculous.”

Sylvain hung his head as if shamed, but it was really to hide the big goofy grin on his face. After a second, when he’d mustered the self control to not burst out laughing, he said: “Oh, trust me, I know. You’ll be happy to hear I sent my entourage packing.”

Felix snorted.

“An entourage! How many times did you have to lick her boots to get decorated like that?” Felix asked.

“Hey now,” Sylvain said, a little sharper, as that was less funny. “I was doing no licking of boots. If anything, she was ready to lick mine just to get me to bring you back… probably so she could lick yours.”

Felix scoffed.

“What’s in it for you if I say yes?”

“Money,” Sylvain said. “She offered the Gautier lands back too. And if that’s what’s on the table for me playing messenger boy, think of what she’ll offer you.”

“I could have my lands back just by showing up,” Felix replied. He frowned. “You don’t have yours, so who is protecting the border with Sreng? Isn't that dangerous?”

“I... don’t know. I sold them to Ingrid for a bit of gold,” Sylvain said. He felt badly suddenly, like he’d invited a foul smell into his house. Felix frowned deeply, but he turned his attention to poking the fire. “I haven’t heard about anything with Sreng, so I guess she’s holding it down. She didn’t want them but she took them, so she must have figured something out. Maybe her sisters are running the place.”

“She’s always been too soft on you,” Felix said.

“She’s great,” Sylvain replied, softly. “And a better person than either of us."

Felix shrugged. Sylvain couldn't tell if he agreed or disagreed; Felix had always been funny about Ingrid, happy to squabble with her to the point of fisticuffs over their ideals while also prepared to fight to the death for her. The only thing they consistently agreed on was that Sylvain was a fool, and they had spent much of their lives ganging up on him for it: sometimes justly, sometimes because three was an inherently unstable number and Sylvain, the eldest and most irresponsible, was an easy target for disdain. He never took it too personally. They did it just as much in the other directions: it was easy to exclude Ingrid because she was the _girl_, and Felix because he could be deliberately cruel.

They weren't always three, though. They were only three because Dimitri had once been the fourth leg of their table, and all bets were off when he'd severed himself from their childish conflicts.

Sylvain didn't want to think about Dimitri. He sighed.

"But I guess her lands are now Imperial lands, and Edelgard can do what _she_ wants with them. I don’t know what she has planned to change things but I’d guess there’s something, between her and Lorenz.”

“Haven’t heard about him in a long time,” Felix said.

“He’s representing the households of the alliance now that Claude’s flown the coop and left Fódlan,” Sylvain said. “Or so I heard, anyway. You know, I think you and I are the most disappointing recruits she talked over to the Eagles, seeing as the rest of ‘em are all still on board with her mission. Ignatz is _painting_ and probably still doing more for her.”

“We did our part,” Felix said, in a final way that told Sylvain that the topic was dead. Still, he hummed curiously. “But her mission is still going strong without us. I hear all of Magdred is turning to grapes now, on the Emperor’s orders. She had some survey people tour the area for a few years and determine what was best for it, so now they produce wine. There’s so much work that people from Faerghus are pouring in. No profit yet, but if it could work, they would be set for life.”

Sylvain gave a thoughtful hum of his own.

“When she gets as far north as Fhirdiad, she’ll struggle.”

“She’s already struggling,” Felix said. “She’s been sending relief for years to keep them going until she can really sink her teeth in, but the roads are in such poor conditions that it's hard to make a difference. It doesn't matter. It’ll all fail eventually no matter what, because she doesn’t understand Faerghus. It loves suffering too much for all of this.”

He gestured around them in a big broad circle, all of Fódlan falling around him as its momentary epicentre.

“A prosperous United Kingdom of Fódlan.”

“He wanted that too,” Sylvain said, suddenly. That sadness gripped him. “He...”

“Don't kid yourself, he didn't even want to be king,” Felix replied, so to the point that Sylvain fell quiet to nurse the wound. “And even if he did, he couldn’t even feed his own people. Every ambition he had was based on empty promises and lies. What kind of peacemaker is that?”

Sylvain chewed on that a moment. It was true. He couldn’t imagine a future in which Dimitri could unite Fódlan, not without indulging in a fair bit of fantasy, and Sylvain hated to be reminded of his part in that.

"We tried," Sylvain said.

“I don’t want to talk about those days,” Felix said. “They’re behind us.”

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “I get it.”

Both of them were silent for a moment, and then Felix stood up.

“I’m going to bed,” he said. “You can lay out yours anywhere you’d like.”

He vanished inside. Sylvain sat a moment longer, contemplating all the things he had done wrong, and then he got up and headed back to his horses to blanket them and fetch his bed roll. He whispered his goodnights to them both, stripped off the last few pieces of armour he was wearing, and headed back to the windmill.

Inside, by the light of the embers, he could see Felix already tucked into his bedding. There was plenty of space around the room, including a nice spot in front of the hearth where the warm coals would keep him coziest, but Sylvain chose instead to roll out his bedding at Felix’s side. He sensed Felix watching him as he did, but neither said anything, and as Sylvain kicked off his boots and eased himself into his blankets, Felix rolled over so his face was to the wall, back to Sylvain.

Sylvain didn’t mind. It was just enough to be close. For a moment he laid there, happy, at least, to be together again, and then he reached out and put a hand to Felix’s shoulder. Felix did nothing, remaining perfectly still, and Sylvain just rested his palm against his friend’s shoulder blade for a moment. He exhaled deeply, feeling calmed, and then he returned his hand to himself.

“I really did miss you, you know,” he murmured.

“I missed you too,” Felix replied.

Sylvain slept well.


	10. Good Neighbours

Felix was already up when Sylvain woke. He didn’t feel too sad for it, because he was used to waking up alone, but today was different. He knew Felix couldn’t be far. He laid his arm out in the empty space for a moment just to relish not dreading his day. He contemplated never going back to Enbarr, and instead just staying with Felix in Remire. He felt confident that Felix would be okay with that, especially since they hadn’t been able to just relax and be friends since the Academy days. It seemed far more plausible to stay than it did to convince Felix to come back to Enbarr; Felix didn't seem likely to work with Edelgard again.

But he could smell meat cooking, and that banished all other thoughts. He was hungry, and hunger trumped all.

He went out the back door towards the cooking fire. Felix was crouched by it, poking a few fat stripes of some wild meat around in the bottom of the pot. It sizzled and popped, and Sylvain watched as Felix cracked a couple eggs into it. Sylvain inhaled as if he could drag in all that delicious food, and Felix glanced at him.

“You slept so late,” Felix said.

“Guilty,” Sylvain said, shrugging. “I guess I was just comfortable.”

“How?” Felix asked. “Your roll didn’t look that thick.”

Sylvain chuckled to himself, under his breath, and he shook his head.

“It wasn't,” he said. “Anything I can do to help with breakfast?”

“Only if you’ve got some tomatoes in your pack,” Felix said. He said it like he might actually kill for a tomato, and Sylvain had to let him down with a shake of his head. “I haven’t had a good tomato in weeks...”

“Likewise,” Sylvain said. “Guess the season ended a little early this year. I just sustain myself on memories. Remember when we’d get Ashe and Dedue and Mercedes and all of them in the kitchen, and they’d make those amazing breakfasts, with the grilled tomatoes?”

“Cut in half and roasted so all the juices stayed inside,” Felix said. “The tops were charred... sometimes a little too much, because Mercedes never knew how to get it just right, but it was still better than anything the nuns did...”

“Fresh cracked pepper,” Sylvain said, raising the stakes, “on Dedue’s eggs. So perfect, you could just touch them with a spoon and they’d leak that perfect, gooey yolk everywhere...”

Felix groaned.

“Shut up!” he protested. “This is going to be mediocre at best...”

Sylvain laughed. Felix just resumed poking around the meat, turning it over so the softer sides could crisp up better. Sylvain ruminated on food a moment longer, trying to hold onto the perfection of those moments, but without Felix to bounce off of, he was left with the uncomfortable reminder that everyone they had just mentioned was...

_Deep breaths_.

Sylvain watched Felix a moment longer, imagining how this same scene would play out if they went back to Enbarr together. Maybe they could get the gang back together, as best as possible, by detouring up to Galatea first to convince Ingrid to join them, and to Fhirdiad to get Annette. They could go back to the ruins of Garreg Mach and call in all their friends from the Black Eagles and the Golden Deer and have a big breakfast. A reunion of sorts. Cover up all the sad memories with fresh good ones, as fresh as the eggs Felix was turning over at the bottom of the pot.

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “_Would_ you come back to Enbarr with me?”

Felix looked up at him, vaguely confused, as if he’d thought the matter was settled already. Sylvain just let the silence hang, waiting for an answer.

“I don’t understand why she would send you here without telling you why she wanted me,” Felix said. “Did she just think I’d be so curious that I couldn’t resist?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvain said. “I assume it’s something to do with Gautier and Fraldarius, but then I don’t know why she’d need both of us together first. Doesn’t it make you curious?”

“No,” said Felix, bluntly.

“Not even a little bit?”

Felix paused, and then repeated: “No. Not enough to throw it all away on.”

“I thought that at first too,” Sylvain said.

“What have you been doing?” Felix asked. He asked as though he were heavily suspicious, or as he needed Sylvain to prove that they were even remotely the same.

“Uh,” Sylvain said, knowing he was about to be levelled with Felix-grade judgement. He laughed a little, and then said: “I was working at a brothel out in the countryside, about a day’s ride from Enbarr.”

“Typical,” Felix said, dryly. “Might as well get paid for what you’re good at.”

“What? No!” Sylvain could only snort. “It was like a security and maintenance thing. I kept the girls safe and did some chores around the place. It was a good gig.”

“So good you immediately threw it away to play manhunter for Edelgard.”

“First of all, she knew exactly where you were and it took me only three days to find you once I docked in Varley, so don’t get ahead of yourself thinking you’re so sneaky,” Sylvain replied. “She found me the same way, and I’ll bet she knew where I was for months before that too.”

Felix sighed, sitting back on his stool, and he threw Sylvain a displeased look.

“That just sounds like reason to go somewhere truly remote,” he said.

“You should just be glad that I came to get you,” Sylvain said. “She could have sent Hubert. When he comes to get you, it's_ not_ pretty. Last time he got me, I thought I was going to _die._”

Felix rolled his eyes, and he busied himself with emptying the eggs and meats onto a single plate. He gestured with it, and Sylvain fished his fork out of his pocket and sat down with his friend to eat. The two of them devoured the plate in no time, and Sylvain cut up a bit of cheese and bread to go with it. By now, the bread was getting too stale for his teeth, so he broke that into pieces for the horses.

“Think about it a bit, at least,” Sylvain said. “For me.”

Felix sighed again, and frustration radiated off of him like a stone in the furnace of Ailell’s rivers. Sylvain decided to tread a bit more lightly, wary of scaring Felix off entirely by being too pushy or digging up old conflicts, but to his surprise, Felix asked:

“And you _really_ can’t make money any other way, that you have to take hers?”

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “It’s not about money.”

Felix levelled him with that same warning look. Sylvain groaned.

“Okay, fine. For the money I need?” Sylvain replied. “Not really. I could work my entire life in brothels or stables or taverns and it still wouldn’t be enough. I mean, I’m going to anyway ––– after this I’m probably just going to be a labourer or something — but I need money now.”

“For what? You don’t want your land back.”

“No,” Sylvain said. Even if he wanted it, he didn’t have the power to fix any of it, and so he didn’t deserve it. “I just need it to live, you know, like... keep a roof over my head, keep my belly full.”

It felt humbling to admit he didn’t even have that much, but Felix didn’t seem to care, either. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t any different, himself. He probably lived off bartering for whatever he couldn’t hunt, fish or cultivate, and maybe whatever gold he lifted off of bandits.

“Running errands for Edelgard pays for more than just that,” Felix said. “What else?”

Sylvain hadn’t told anyone why he really needed the money. Aside from having not seen most of his friends in years, he hadn’t really _had_ anyone to tell, but even then, he thought the shame of admitting it might kill him, or write off any last good sentiments people might have towards him. After all, it was one thing to be a nobleman in Edelgard’s Fódlan, and to be a no-good scoundrel with no intentions of marrying, and to be responsible for everything he did, but...

“I have a kid,” Sylvain said, finally, the words dropping off his lips like lead. Felix was quiet, just watching him, so Sylvain mustered up an explanation: “The mother doesn’t want me in her life, so I just send money to support them when I can, but I don't make a ton… I know I'm an irresponsible piece of shit.”

Felix looked at him. Sylvain felt his stomach drop right into his feet, and the longer Felix was quiet, the more he felt the urge to tremble. He was worse than washed-up. He was a deadbeat.

“Oh,” Felix said, finally. “That’s it?”

“Hey,” Sylvain replied, hurt. “This is serious. It’s serious to me.”

“I’m sure it is,” Felix said, unbothered regardless. “I’m just surprised. With how much you get around, I would have thought you’d already left a trail of bastard children all across Fódlan.”

“Felix, come on,” Sylvain groaned. “You know Miklan never looked after any of _his_ bastards, and I don’t—”

Felix prodded at Sylvain’s shoulder with his fork.

“I’m not saying it’s not serious,” Felix said, pointedly. “And I get it. I also know you were careful when we were younger, or at least claimed to be. But I’m saying there could be any number of red-haired, shit-talking kids out there with a minor Crest of Gautier. Why this kid?”

Sylvain tried to pluck up an answer.

“Does it have a major crest?” Felix asked.

“_No_, you fucking _asshole_,” Sylvain said, but he said it with a sigh. “That kid is just the only kid I know of, so quit giving me a hard time for wanting to make things right however I can.”

Felix shrugged.

“It’s an honourable thing to do,” he agreed. “Would it ease your conscience if I came to Enbarr with you so you get paid?”

Sylvain dared to hope.

“Yeah, actually,” he said. “It would help a lot.”

Felix pondered it a moment and then nodded.

“Alright. I’ll go.”

Sylvain perked up immediately, opening his arms to grab Felix in a bear hug, but Felix saw it coming and held up his cooking knife in defence. Sylvain laughed, dancing around the tip pointed at his belly and pretending he hadn’t tried at all, instead reaching to clap Felix on the shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said, all in one big breath of relief. “Thank you. It means a lot.”

“Thank me when you’ve been paid,” Felix replied.

“Sure,” Sylvain agreed, though he felt he was going to be thankful all the way through regardless. “And thanks for not, uh... judging me.”

Felix shrugged.

“I figured you would have slipped up eventually,” he said. “Especially now that Edelgard thinks crests are meaningless. It was only a matter of time before you put aside your weird paranoia about girls wanting you for your crest and stopped being careful.”

“I mean,” Sylvain trailed, and electing to ignore most of that for obvious reasons, he continued: “crests _are_ meaningless.”

“Mine isn’t,” Felix said.

“I can’t even remember the last time I even used mine,” Sylvain said. “What do you even do with it? Kill a deer a little faster? Fight off a bandit even though a guy with your training could do it armed with only a butter knife?”

“It’s fun,” Felix said.

Felix smirked and spun the cooking knife in his palm like it were a dagger, and upon catching it he thrust it forward to stab the air before him. As he did, the sigil of Fraldarius alit upon his stroke, and a deep, thrumming _bwommmm_ sound vibrated in Sylvain’s ears. It faded and Felix turned the knife over in his hand and stabbed it into one of the benches, where it stood on end, still vibrating quietly.

_Show off_, Sylvain thought. Felix glanced at him, as if waiting for Sylvain to activate his own, but Sylvain just chuckled and shook his head. Felix shrugged.

“We can head to Enbarr in a few days,” Felix said, finally. “I want to mop up a bandit camp that’s settled just north, then I can go. Want to help?”

Sylvain grinned, and he laced his fingers together and cracked them.

“Would I _ever,_” he said.

The bandit camp was modest, a collection of ten or so tents and a couple constructed lean-tos nestled in the crux of two mountains. It was well-hidden from the road by a thick blanket of trees, but just close enough that a lookout could spot coming travellers and signal to the rest that it was time to swarm. Their band was large, but their camp was easy to get to, which Felix and Sylvain did by tying up the horses a couple hundred yards south and then sneaking the rest of the way on foot. They had a good vantage point, crouched in the foothills of the mountains, just high enough that they could look down upon the camp, their presence obscured by an outcropping of rocks.

As they prepared, Felix tied a cloth around his face, just under his eyes, and he pulled up his hood. His dark shaggy hair hung out the front. From the eyes of a traveller, Sylvain thought, the only visual difference between Felix and the bandits was who was stabbing who.

Felix glanced aside at Sylvain and then up to his bright hair, and he sighed.

“Keep your head down,” he said, quietly, “or they’re going to spot us and we’ll lose the advantage.”

Sylvain grinned and ducked a little lower. He thought he might blend in with the turning trees, but maybe not.

“Yes, Captain,” he said.

Felix rolled his eyes and then fixed his attention back out on the camp. The bandits were just finishing up lunch, evidently ready to go back into the roads. The plunder of their previous assaults was piled up in chests and sacks, stacked high in carts; perhaps the worldly goods of three or four families. Sylvain imagined they would be carted off somewhere and then sold off piecemeal, scattering it all to the winds of trade and the thriving second-hand markets. It left a sick feeling in Sylvain’s stomach, and he could only imagine the contempt it stirred in Felix, a man who had always been primarily concerned with justice above all else.

“If I go down from the left, you can go down from the right, and we can clear them out twice as fast,” Sylvain murmured.

“We aren’t being timed,” Felix replied. “Don’t be foolish. We work together and guard each other’s backs.”

Sylvain hadn’t been in even a bar brawl with a friend for years, let alone properly fought with someone by his side, Hubert’s assistance notwithstanding. The realization that they could do just that felt savoury on his lips. Felix gave him an odd look, evidently because Sylvain could not resist a silly grin, and he gave him a little shove.

“Get it together,” he said, eyes back on the bandits. “We go.”

Felix snuck aside, and Sylvain followed, quietly as he could in full armour. Felix, lighter and swifter still, hopped a bank of rocks and landed in the underbrush with no sound to speak of. Sylvain followed with a great clatter as his hip armour glanced off the stone. Every other head in a hundred yards turned. Felix slid down into the bush, out of sight, and Sylvain followed, but it was too late. A bandit cried for the men and women in his camp to muster.

“Fuck,” Sylvain muttered to Felix.

Felix just stood up, a dagger in hand. He put one foot ahead, firm in the underbrush, and he drew back his arm to throw. The dagger sliced through the air and came to a stop with a sick thud, lodged five inches deep into a coming man’s sternum, accompanied by the deep tone of the crest of Fraldarius activating. He gasped and fell. Felix moved forward, blade drawn.

Sylvain was up too. He saw an archer draw and so he surged forward to draw their attention. It glanced off his shoulder pauldron with a clink and Sylvain drew his sword. He grabbed an unarmed bandit by the collar and smashed him between the eyes with the pommel; the man staggered and fell, and Sylvain let him go. He glanced aside. Felix’s crest toned again as he slashed through the neck of another bandit, and kicked her in the gut so she would not fall atop him. Both moved forward. Sylvain picked up Felix’s dagger with a hard tug, and whistled. Felix turned his head, raised a hand, and Sylvain flipped it his way. It spun in the air, Felix grabbed it by the handle, and immediately plunged it into another’s shoulder.

“No crest that time?” Sylvain shouted. Almost as retaliation, Felix activated it three more times in the next fifteen seconds.

Sylvain felt a rush of adrenaline subsume him. He cut down another and switched to his hand-axe, lobbing it into the skull of one more before retrieving it and hooking it back to his belt. He wished sorely for a lance, as it had been some time since he had the pleasure of his favourite weapon, and so he disarmed the next bandit of hers, passed her on to Felix to kill, and then swept the legs out from under another with a great arc of his lance.

Only one remained. Sylvain lifted his new lance to hurl it like a javelin, but Felix grabbed it and stopped him.

“I always let one survive,” he said.

Sylvain grinned.

“That old playbook eh?”

“One of the best,” Felix replied.

The last bandit was already scrambling onto a cart horse and clinging to its back as it carried him away. Sylvain watched him go, and then turned his attention to the lance. It was terribly rusted, the head about ready to snap clean off the handle, so he bent it over his knee and did just that. Might as well finish it off. Felix rolled his eyes and kept on, heading over to the stores of stolen goods and starting to root through it. He found some provisions and untied another large cloth from his shoulders and laid it out on the ground. Sylvain poked around, too, and he refilled his empty water skein with wine from the bandits' stores while Felix loaded the provisions into the cloth.

"Don't waste your time with that," Felix said, gesturing at the wine. "We can get water from the stream, I'd rather the horses carry vegetables."

"Please, we earned a drink," Sylvain replied, and he took a swig to prove a point. He offered it to Felix, who rolled his eyes but came over anyway and took a swig of his own. Sylvain grinned and topped it back up again. "Hey, we could take some back and celebrate our reunion. When's the last time you had a bit of fun?"

"Pack it on your horse, then," Felix relented. That was fine by Sylvain. He set about doing just that, and Felix returned to his packing.

“So what happens next?” Sylvain called, watching Felix fold the cloth and tie it end-to-end.

“Nothing,” he said. “We just go.”

Sylvain threw him a confused look. Felix just swung the bag back over his shoulder and then moved to the next nearest pile of goods. He opened up a trunk and peered in, then slammed it shut again.

“What about all this stuff?”

“What about it?”

Sylvain gave Felix an even more confused look.

“We just leave it there? What about the families it was stolen from?”

Felix shrugged.

“You think I’m going to bring back a camp of thirty people’s worth of stuff back to town, and track down the owners of it? Some of them could be halfway to Enbarr now. They escaped with their lives. All that matters is that this road will be clear for a while so more do, too.”

Point, Sylvain thought, but he still felt it odd to leave it all there. He meandered between the trunks, flipping them open and finding everything from cooking utensils to family heirlooms. One had a wedding dress that might have been stylish when Sylvain’s parents were wed, and another had carved wooden toys for small children. Another had an inexpensive but no doubt sentimental hunting knife with a handle made from horn.

“Well, I'm here,” Sylvain said. "Between the two of us, we could get it back to town. Maybe someone there knows where the families went and could get it all back to them...”

Felix seemed surprised by this notion.

“When you’d become such a do-gooder?” he asked.

Sylvain shrugged. In his opinion, always, but other deeds always balanced it out handily.

“This coming from the guy who has made a life protecting refugees from pillage and plunder,” he said. “You don’t like the idea?”

“I really like the idea,” Felix said, “I just never could do that on my own. But even with the two of us, how are we supposed to get it all done?”

Sylvain grinned, raising his skein in a toast.

“We’ve got time,” he said. “Edelgard’s not expecting us any time soon.”

Sylvain regretted his charity after their third hour attempting to haul all of the plunder out to the road. It was far too steep for the horses to bring the carts up to the road already loaded. Between the two of them they had the strength to haul one chest at a time up the slopes to the road, but navigating the forest floor and all its fallen leaves and spidery roots and camp mud slowed them down considerably, and more than once, they slipped back down the slope they were trying to climb and had to start all over again.

Still, since it was his idea, Sylvain kept up the attitude that it was roaring fun –– otherwise, Felix might have killed him. It _did _feel good to do something nice, too. Who could say if it would ever be acknowledged? It was enough to feel that way. It had to be, as it made up for the back-breaking labour.

“Why do I let you talk me into these things?” Felix said, huffing and puffing as he tried to lift a trunk high enough to get it over a root. Sylvain laughed, following behind with his end, mud all up his front from a bad slide.

“Does this make you feel like we’re twelve years old again?” Sylvain asked. “Remember when there was the first hunt of summer, and we weren’t allowed to go, so we packed ourselves up and took off at dawn to meet up with them when we were too far out for them to send us back, and we got stuck in the mud and thought we were going to die, and you were so mad that I talked you into it that you yelled at me the whole time, and then Ingrid was yelling at me, and Dimitri was also yelling at me, but then for years we talked about it like it was the most fun thing we’d ever done? This is exactly like that. Years from now you’re going to think back to this moment and smile to yourself because of how much fun it was.”

“I don’t feel twelve,” Felix argued. “I feel like _you_ are still twelve, because you’re an _idiot_.”

“Oh please, you complained like a little girl the whole time, just like you’re doing now!” Sylvain grinned. “I give it one week and you’re going to think fondly about this.”

“I am going to think fondly about how I kicked your ass!”

Sylvain chuckled to himself and helped Felix heft the last trunk onto the cart. Getting the carts out had been easy enough, at least, as Sylvain was feeling very refreshed in getting horses up steep slopes. Felix and Sylvain surveyed their work.

“We’re done. Feeling better?” Sylvain asked.

“No,” Felix said.

“Suit yourself, you big baby,” Sylvain said. He set about tying his and Felix’s horses to the back of the cart so that they could ride together in the cart. The rest of the horses and carts they left in the woods; he was sure if they told someone in town about them, people would go fetch them before evening, as horses were valuable enough to not leave exposed to the elements for too long.

He set himself in the driver’s seat, taking the long reins in one hand. Felix climbed in next to him, and maybe he underestimated how wide the bench was because he settled so close that their shoulders touched. Felix yawned.

“Looks like someone should have slept in,” Sylvain said, and he put an arm around Felix with a smile. “You want to nap on the way back? I think I know this road well enough.”

“I’m not going to nap,” Felix said, peeling the offending hand off of his bicep and nudging Sylvain until he took his arm back. “You have to be alert on these roads. There might be new bandits setting up anywhere.”

“Sure,” Sylvain said.

But sure enough, Felix was asleep before long, head nodding forward and bobbing up and down with the rock of the wheels over the uneven roads. For a bit, Sylvain let Felix be, but when it didn’t seem like Felix would wake any time soon, he gave him a little shove. Felix blearily opened his eyes, and Sylvain gestured to the back of the cart with a jerk of his head.

“Baby’s tired,” Sylvain cooed.

“Shut up,” Felix groused, climbing over the seat and into the back. He prodded around various bags of supplies and settled on stretching out on one of them, feet propped up on a trunk.

“Want me to sing you to sleep?”

Felix raised him a middle finger and pulled his hood up so far it drooped over his eyes.

Sylvain sang under his breath anyway:

_ Downe in yonder greene field,_

_ Downe-a-downe, hey downe, hey downe,_

_ There lies a knight slain under his shield, with a downe…_

Felix slept all through the afternoon, even though times where Sylvain belted out songs to keep himself company, or gave all the new horses temporary names, or bit into the world’s crispest apple, where every bite sent a little fleshy pop echoing in the woods and a dribble of juice down his chin. He had felt a little sad at first, itching to make conversation with Felix after so long apart, but listening to Felix’s slow, deep breaths felt like company in its own right, and his presence felt as warm and comforting as Bernadetta chattering in his ear. He glanced back periodically, smiling upon glimpsing the lower half of a familiar face, and then turning his eyes back to the road.

Even if Felix vanished on him after this, returning to his hollowed-out village where he could play watchful guardian over a cluster of mountain villages for the rest of his life, Sylvain felt comfort knowing he was at least somewhere he could visit. And for now, he had their time together on the road to look forward to: six days to Enbarr, at least a few in town. Maybe a week or two, if he could convince Felix to visit a while. And then what? Who would he visit after? Probably whoever was closest to Enbarr, he thought. After that, he'd journey around, working here and there, until he had the muster to get up North to see Ingrid. It seemed as good a plan as any, and with the money from Edelgard he could take his time a little.

On the outskirts of town, he met a couple of farmers, who he told about the horses and camp supplies, and they went off to rally some friends and family to go fetch them. Deeper into town, Sylvain found a tavern, and he nipped in for bit until he was informed of where to find the lord of the region. The lord of any region was responsible for the protection of its people, and so she seemed like the best bet, but she was in another town that day settling a minor dispute over the ownership of sheep. Sylvain contemplated driving them off to find her, but he thought Felix might not like committing to a longer trip, so he came to an agreement with the tavern owner that he would store the wayward goods until the lord could come possess them and see them back to their rightful owners. He spent a few more minutes after that chatting up a local girl. He would have taken her upstairs to a rented room if he thought he could get away with it (or afford it), but he didn't want to leave Felix sleeping in the cart for too long, so he settled for fingering her out behind the building. Amazing what he could accomplish in just an hour when he really put his mind to it.

When he went back out to the cart, he found Felix _still_ asleep. His hood had fallen back slightly, revealing his wild mess of dark hair. People walking by gave him the occasional look, wondering who this woodsman was, sleeping outside of the tavern. A drunk, maybe. A smile tugged at Sylvain's lips.

“Wake up,” Sylvain said to Felix, nudging him in the ribs. Felix did not move, so Sylvain pinched his nose until Felix startled, gasping for breath and flailing. Sylvain caught a hard smack to the face for his trouble, and he clamoured out of the cart laughing, even as Felix yelled after him.

“You can’t wake a man up like a normal human being?” Felix demanded. Feeling like a rowdy young man again, Sylvain just laughed, and he ran around the other side of the cart as if Felix might chase him down. Felix started to, but then he stopped and complained: “How long have we been here? What if people saw me? I wasn't even wearing my––”

“That bandanna looked dumb as rocks,” Sylvain interrupted. “Anyway, I talked to the tavern-master. We’re leaving the stuff here, they're going to handle it.”

Felix rolled his eyes, marched around the cart and gave Sylvain a hard shove, which Sylvain took just to smooth things over. Sometimes you had to do that with Felix.

The two of them set about freeing their horses from the train, and then they set off and picked up some salted meats and bread and a few other things they hadn't come by in the bandit camp, as well as some provisions for the journey to Enbarr. This time, Sylvain decided, they wouldn’t bother with passage by sea; they’d just travel across the land, as the land was far more familiar to them both than the water, but also because they could buy themselves some extra time. On the ride back to Remire to pack up Felix’s things and retrieve Horse, they plotted from memory the villages and towns they could stop in for supplies and for good inns, remembering back to their school days and traveling for missions. Neither had traveled leisurely since the war, and just this short trip had shown him how much Fódlan had changed, and Sylvain felt excited to see more of it with someone to share it with.

He had just one more thing to ask before they hit the road.

“Hey Felix?” Sylvain said, as they got back into Remire. It was just after sundown, and Felix busied himself with lighting a lantern so they could cross the village to the windmill. Felix gave a sound of acknowledgement, barely looking over. Sylvain continued: “I do need one more favour from you before we go. I hope it's not too much to ask… it's kind of personal.”

“What?” Felix asked.

Sylvain dropped the reins in order to reach out to Felix, and Felix stayed very, very still as Sylvain cupped his face in his hands. Sylvain smiled, and Felix just glowered at him, looking wary as can be. Sylvain stroked one cheek with his thumb, slow and tender.

“It’s important,” he said. “Listen. Really listen.”

“Then spit it out,” Felix implored him, but _still_ he lingered, even leaning into Sylvain’s touch. "And stop petting me."

“I need you to promise me,” Sylvain said, slowly, “that you will get a haircut somewhere along the way, because that shit looks _awful._”

Felix groaned and reeled away from him.

“I’ll get to it, okay!_ You_ try cutting your hair living like this—“

Sylvain just laughed, skittering away before he could get walloped again.


	11. Balancing Acts

Eating pussy was Sylvain’s favourite part of sleeping with women.

His reasons were numerous:

First of all, it was fun, it was often noisy, and it was always wet. He really liked that. He liked it when things got all slippery, and even if you could only coax a girl into doing that much, by time she was that wet, she’d be the one begging for more.

Second, because of his willingness to go down where other young men might hesitate or want to be serviced first (or exclusively), he got a lot of repeat customers, so to speak. It made him look like a proper gentleman.

Third, he had what he considered “natural” suspicion of women who were only interested in riding him, and women who wanted to blow him tended to want to curry favour with him along the same vein. He had a great fear of making a crest baby and losing his freedom even one moment earlier than he had to. But a woman who would come all over his face? Stellar. She could literally suffocate him and he would just die happy, right there.

Fourth, he was fucking great at it, if he did say so himself.

But that said, it was hard to concentrate when people kept rapping on the door.

With a heavy sigh, breath heaving, Sylvain extricated himself from the pussy he was in the process of being smothered under.

“One second, babe,” he muttered. “That’s my neighbour.”

“Can’t you just ignore him?” Dorothea asked, rising on her knees on his bed in a way that made him real tempted to just nock his head right back under there. He knew better than to push his luck; Dimitri was a real pest about these kinds of things. He marched to the door and opened it a crack, blocking the space with his body.

“Hey man,” Sylvain said, as apologetically as he could muster. “I know it’s noisy, but it’s too hot to close the windows.”

But it was Felix. Sylvain grit his teeth. Surely, Felix knew the drill with these things by now? Sylvain fixed him with a scowl and Felix fixed him with one in return.

“I don’t give a damn how loud she is,” Felix said. “We need to talk.”

Sylvain grumbled, shifting the door closed a bit more so he could adjust his pants.

“I’m a little busy,” Sylvain said, pointedly.

“We have to talk,” Felix insisted. “You have to come back.”

“Again, I’m kind of busy,” Sylvain replied, gesturing at his mouth. “I’ll talk to you tonight, probably after dinner.”

Felix fixed him with a deeply disturbed look, but with an angry sigh, he turned on his heel to march off. Sylvain snapped the door shut and turned back to his lover. He licked his lips, but his smile died when he saw Dorothea was up off the bed, shimmying her panties back on under her skirt.

_Shit_.

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “Sorry about that, sweetheart. You don’t have to go...”

“It’s fine,” Dorothea replied, but nothing about her tone suggested it was fine. She gave him a furtive look and started buttoning her blouse. Sylvain watched the strip of bare skin from her navel to her cleavage vanish, button by button. “It sounds like you have important _noble_ matters to attend to. I wouldn’t want to be a distraction.”

“If anything, he’s the distraction,” Sylvain promised. He sidled back into her space, hands finding her hips, and he bumped her up against him. Dorothea sighed, looking up at him through her dark lashes. Her gaze said: _Hi, Sylvain. Yes, I feel your cock, and it's sooo big and I want it soooo much––_

“I’ll talk to you later,” her mouth said.

Sylvain sighed.

“Will you?”

Maybe not the smoothest thing to say. Dorothea flicked his hands from her hips and moved away. He could almost follow, leaning his hips forward even as she withdrew, but she headed for the door with a very tight smile. Sylvain thought about rattling Felix down to his bones. For _weeks_ she’d been playing hard-to-get...

“You win, Felix!” Dorothea called, cheerily, down the hall, so every damn person could hear.

Great. It was going to take weeks to smooth that over, if he even could.

But after dinner, Felix came by his room again, irritation radiating off of him. For a moment they stood in awkward silence, Sylvain still annoyed about being interrupted and Felix still annoyed about being blown off and whatever other Felix-y things he took personally, and then Sylvain sighed and opened the door for Felix to come in.

Felix gave the room a very obvious and judgemental sniff, and Sylvain rolled his eyes. Felix cast a glance at the made but rumpled bed and elected to drag around the desk chair and sit in that, but he still touched it as though Sylvain might have rubbed bodily fluids on every inch of it. Sylvain sat on his bed. Whatever. He owned his own depravity.

“So why am I supposed to transfer back to the Blue Lions?” he asked.

Felix heaved a sigh.

“He’s _snapping_,” Felix said. “And everyone acts like everything is fine, but he has this temper that flares up out of nowhere, and he gets violent. Today he asked Hanneman a question, and he didn’t like the answer, and you could just see the light die on his face. After, when Hanneman left, he picked up a piece of chalk and whipped it across the room.”

Sylvain kicked off his slippers and lifted his feet, crossing his legs on the bed. He gave Felix a long, steady look and said: “Uh-huh...”

“He was _mad_,” Felix said, “Over a _question_.”

“Okay,” Sylvain said. “Was the question like, particularly psychotic, so Hanneman didn’t really stand a chance, or...?”

“No,” Felix said. “It was a perfectly normal question with a mediocre answer.”

Sylvain nodded.

“Okay,” he repeated. “And this chalk, was it uh, directed at anyone? Did it hit you? Are you okay?”

Sylvain’s voice had dipped a little mocking towards the end, and Felix looked about ready to snap himself. He stood up and stared at Sylvain, expression darkening.

“You’re not taking this seriously. It’s not about the chalk, or what the question was, it’s that he freaks out and no one seems to notice but me!”

“I notice,” Sylvain said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about. I do get it. He’s been hard on me, too — he’s definitely not happy about me changing classes, to the point where I’ve kind of been _avoiding_ him, at least until he cools down.”

“That’s not helpful,” Felix said.

“Well, what do you want me to do? Cry about it?”

“I want you to stand up to him! I’m still the only one pointing it out to his face. I’m the only one telling him he needs to get it together. He’s going to be King in a _year_.”

“I know,” Sylvain said, pacifying. As turbulent as they could be, he was glad that Felix was not the type to bottle of his emotions, or pretend they weren’t there. Having them on his sleeve felt predictable, even easy. He gestured for Felix to sit again. “I know. I’m sorry. But Felix — breathe.”

Felix sat, very slowly. His chest rose and fell like a frightened rabbit, and for a moment, he looked away, trying to compose himself. It came easily. He finally said, in a measured tone: “Everyone is acting like nothing is wrong.”

“Something’s pretty wrong,” Sylvain agreed. He knew Dimitri struggled, and he felt like an asshole for not being there enough, but how much more of his life could he give? He rolled his lips over his teeth and then he said: “I’ll see if I can talk with him a bit this week.”

Felix sighed.

“It’s not going to make a difference.”

“Well, then, why are you here asking me to change houses again?” Sylvain said. “Yeah, he freaks out over stuff, and he’s scary when he’s upset, but I’m not sure what you want me to do other than be a friend to him.”

He thought about the Eagles and how normal they were by comparison. How peaceful. How diligent they were in their self-improvement, constantly checking in on shut-ins like Linhardt or Bernadetta, constantly trying to channel Caspar’s enthusiasm into more, always trying to make a change. Their optimistic attitudes, even if they could sometimes be overbearing. How Edelgard didn’t ever _snarl_ at him.

It felt awful to feel like he was tired of the drama. It felt like he’d given up on some deep level. Dimitri was his friend, and he was a friend to Dimitri — Sylvain figured he should be acting more like it.

But what could he do?

Felix moved to leave. Sylvain reached to stop him.

“Okay,” Sylvain said, quickly. “I’ll try to talk to him a _lot_ more. But in return... promise me you’ll look into transferring to the Eagles.”

“_What_?”

Sylvain hated Felix’s lack of self-preservation sometimes. In any reasonable world, Felix would have been the first to defect, the first to see these kinds of warning signs and take off. It didn’t make sense to Sylvain, that Felix would be the most disbelieving in Dimitri’s ability to heal while also refusing to leave his side.

“Think about it,” Sylvain said. “Just think about it. You have a million reasons to, and it’s just a year. You can get a little space from all of that, you can focus on your training, you can feel, I don’t know, happy for a change.”

“Happy,” Felix uttered, as if this was a foreign concept.

“Yes, Felix,” Sylvain said, frustrated. “Happy. Like it’s a nice day, and you got to do your thing all day, and the food in the dining hall was just perfect, and people are friendly to you, and not once do you feel like life is one big slog. Happy.”

Felix rolled his eyes.

“I know what happy is,” Felix said. “I mean with our responsibility, I don’t think it’s as easy as switching houses and pretending to be from somewhere else for a year.”

“You look into it, Felix, and I’ll talk to Dimitri,” Sylvain repeated, firmly.

“Alright,” Felix said. “I will.”

Sylvain nodded. He dreaded his part in it, but he had hope that maybe, just maybe, everything would go well. For a moment the two of them just sat there, each stewing in their thoughts.

“Wanna sleep over?” Sylvain asked.

“What?”

“You know, like when we were kids,” Sylvain said.

Felix snorted.

“Only if it’s in my room,” Felix said. “I’m not sleeping in your sheets.”

Sylvain burst out laughing, but he got up, tucked his pillow under his arm, and gestured for Felix to lead the way. In that moment, padding down the hall in his socks, watching the back of Felix’s head and counting the stray locks that had escaped his hair ribbon over the course of the day, he felt it would all turn out okay.

He just had to try.

It still took Sylvain a week to pluck up the courage to talk to Dimitri. He didn’t like to frame it like that, of course — who would? He could have blamed his class schedule, a particularly gruelling bowmanship drill, a certification exam and several dates if he wanted to, but Sylvain found it easiest to be honest, and the unfortunate truth was that he, Sylvain Jose Gautier, was chicken-shit. About as chicken-shit as Felix, given Felix hadn’t talked to Professor Byleth, either.

Even then, Sylvain had really only plucked up the courage to talk. He hadn’t really tried to make plans to see Dimitri at all, but when he’d walked into the training arena that night thinking he would see if anyone around wanted to pick up a few rounds, he found Dimitri there alone. If Dimitri hadn’t met his eyes as he came in the door, he might have just snuck right back out.

It had to happen, though.

“Sylvain,” Dimitri said. “Good evening.”

“Hey,” Sylvain said.

“I was starting to think you were avoiding me,” Dimitri said. He smiled. Sylvain did too, a little awkwardly, and Dimitri’s smile faded a bit as well.

Sylvain raked a hand through his hair, sighing. Might as well just say it.

“A little, yeah. Sorry.”

Dimitri frowned, and he put down his lance. Sylvain felt nervous. He hated that feeling — being nervous around someone he’d known his entire life. He got the feeling Dimitri knew it, too. He wasn’t sure what to do about it, and maybe Dimitri didn’t either. It felt like setting out on a long journey knowing his horse was about to lose a shoe, and just hoping everything turned out fine.

“Why?” Dimitri asked, finally, when Sylvain didn’t elaborate. He sounded so genuinely confused that Sylvain felt a little guiltier than he already did. The hurt in his expression didn’t help, either.

“Well,” Sylvain said. “I get the impression you’re not as cool with me changing classes as I initially thought.”

Dimitri hesitated, but he nodded.

“I can’t pretend I’m thrilled about it. I’m happy for you if you’re happy, it just never occurred to me that you were _un_happy with us.”

He didn’t_ quite_ look at Sylvain as he said it, his line of sight going just past him. Sylvain felt a tiny tweak of frustration. The gloves had to come off, he supposed, and he didn’t relish doing it. But he’d promised Felix.

“We both know it goes hand in hand with the other thing I’m about to point out.”

“Which is?”

“That your anger is getting a little out of control, and it’s starting to scare people.”

Dimitri frowned.

“I feel fine.”

Sylvain shook his head.

“I’m sure you do,” he said, maybe a little more clipped than he needed to be. _Calm down,_ he told himself. _Stay fucking calm._ He continued: “But that’s how people feel.”

“Who?”

Sylvain also didn’t feel like selling people out. He shook his head.

“It’s not really my place to say,” Sylvain said.

“No one has said anything to me before now,” Dimitri said, a little frustrated. He stood a little taller, and his brows furrowed. “How am I supposed to soothe people’s concerns if I don’t know who or what they are...?”

“Trust me, I get that’s annoying,” Sylvain said. “But listen. I am telling you that people are scared of you. You make them nervous. You’ve got a real temper. And you want to know who is saying that so you find them and...” Sylvain gave a leading little roll of his wrist. “_Convince_ them you’re not scary?”

Dimitri shook his head.

“I don’t understand what this has to do with you leaving the Blue Lions for Edelgard’s house,” he said. “And we’re talking now, are we not? You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“Dimitri,” Sylvain said, not even sure of where to start with that. “Surely it’s not a complete surprise to you.”

“Other than Felix, I haven’t heard any of this,” Dimitri insisted.

Dimitri had a way of making Sylvain feel crazy, at least in moments like this. He suddenly missed the sappy, sweet-hearted kid he’d once run around Fhirdiad with, the kid who would take any criticism deeply to heart and accept the wounds of others as a wound of his own. Sylvain didn’t know who this person was. He didn’t know how to outrun these constant conversational traps, or break down the walls that Dimitri had erected around himself without prompting the creation of another.

“Right,” Sylvain said, “I’m here now as your friend, telling you that you’re making people uneasy, because your brand of unease is so intense that people are afraid of getting on your bad side.”

“And I’m telling you that I can’t do anything about that if I don’t know what the issue is,” Dimitri argued.

“The issue is you’re not a less angry person just because you pretend you’re not angry,” Sylvain shot back.

“But I’m not angry,” Dimitri insisted. His brows knit heavily. “Frustrated, perhaps, but not angry.”

Sylvain sighed, and for a moment it was quiet between them. Then, as calmly as he could muster, Sylvain explained: “Okay, well, because you mentioned Felix, look at it this way. Some people, including you, think Felix is crying wolf about your temper because he’s the only one making a big deal about it. And it’s easy to make him out to be unreasonable, because he’s been a real dick to you about it and you’ve been pretty patient, so obviously he’s just an asshole, right? But I think deep down you’re pretty mad at him, but you know if you lost your temper on him people would realize he’s right. Is that on the money?”

“I’m sorry, Sylvain, but I don’t think I have a temper issue.”

Sylvain felt the increasing desire to grab Dimitri and shake him, but he just shook his head, feeling his patience start to evaporate. Maybe he shouldn’t have described it as ‘temper’. Maybe he should have described it as ‘increasingly common angry meltdowns that usually resulted in people getting screamed at.’

“I’m under a lot of pressure,” Dimitri said. “I don’t really have the luxury of...”

“Dimitri,” Sylvain cut him off. “I know you’re under pressure. I get it. I have known you since we got our first ponies and all that shit. I might not feel it the same way as you, but I _promise_ I get it. But before I switched classes, we were on stable duty together one last time, and you _yelled_ at me the entire time. You weren’t just being rude or a little curt, you weren’t just explaining things I already knew to me, you _yelled_.”

Dimitri didn’t say anything.

Sylvain barrelled on: “You _screamed_ at me until I felt about two inches tall and any time I stood up for myself, you called me useless and a slack-off, and yeah, maybe sometimes I slack off, but _useless_?”

He was shouting. He cut himself off and breathed hard for a moment. Dimitri took that gap the same way he might close space between himself and an enemy on the battlefield, stepping so close his nose came within six inches of Sylvain’s. Sylvain stepped back reflexively.

“I apologized for that,” Dimitri said, furiously, advancing again, and Sylvain stepped back again. “At the time, I apologized—“

“Yeah, you did, but then you turned around and did it again!” Sylvain snapped. Dimitri stopped in his tracks, but he remained close, too close, a deep fury in this eyes. “So I’m telling you this because you’re my friend, and I give more shits about you than almost anyone else on this planet! You have to get it together! All these apologies mean nothing if you’re just going to turn around and freak out again! Why do you think I wanted a fucking _break_ from this?”

And then Dimitri shoved him. It wasn’t the kind of shove you warned someone with, a get-out-of-my-space push to the shoulders that’d send a man back a step. It was a real shove, a whole-body one that had Sylvain blinking up at Dimitri from the ground, his spine singing out in pain from being pile-driven down. Dimitri stood over him, a foot at Sylvain’s hip, hands still out at ready, one curled into a fist.

Sylvain looked up at Dimitri and found Dimitri gazing down at him with a wild look in his eyes. Sylvain caught his breath and still couldn’t say something, propped up on one elbow and one hand, ready to scramble away if he needed to. The image of his estranged brother standing over him forced its way into his mind so quickly it was dizzying, overlapping with Dimitri’s fury.

A look of shock passed over Dimitri’s face. He stammered something unintelligible, and then he dropped to a knee, offering Sylvain a hand. Sylvain looked at that hand and then up at Dimitri, feeling as though he might as well have been punched.

“Sylvain, I’m so sorry,” Dimitri said, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry, but when you yelled at me I just— Please, let me help you up.”

Sylvain let him. He locked hands with Dimitri and let Dimitri rise and pull him to his feet. Sylvain was hardly a small man, but despite being of a similar height to his friend, Dimitri pulled him up as effortlessly as it might have pulled up a child. Expression run deep with shame, Dimitri straightened Sylvain’s jacket. Sylvain just squared his jaw, letting Dimitri smooth him over, but a deep anger made him feel as though his very bones were vibrating. Finally, he brushed Dimitri off, taking a couple steps away.

“This,” Sylvain said, “is exactly why people are afraid of you.”

“I just...” Dimitri trailed. “I lost my temper.”

“No shit,” Sylvain said, clipped. “I think this conversation is over.”

“Please...”

Sylvain was already headed for the door. He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t want to look at Dimitri anymore, but he also didn’t want to turn his back on him either. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or personal respect for his king. This wasn’t the first time he’d walked sideways fearing getting attacked for having the gall to defend himself.

“Sylvain...”

Sylvain glanced back at him. Dimitri was crying, great tears welling on his lower lashes and then pitching down his cheeks. Sylvain felt the temptation to comfort him and assure him it was okay run as deep as his marrow, but then he felt anger at himself for even thinking that. That feeling, he was sure, was part of the problem. How many years had he spent getting the shit kicked out of him out of guilt for someone else's feelings?

“Get your shit together,” Sylvain snapped. “You’re our king. Take a little responsibility before you fucking hurt anyone, yeah?”

He left, pulling the door closed behind him. He heard Dimitri call after him one last time but then give up. Sylvain kept walking, and though he felt uninjured, every inch of him hurt, even his face. He touched the back of his hand to his own cheek, expecting to feel some inexplicable phantom wound, but he just felt his own burning skin. He shook with so much anger that every step felt like he should be leaving fire in his wake.

He carried that anger with him all the way back to the dormitory stairs, which he took two at a time, almost trembling. He knocked on Felix’s door and then walked back and knocked on Ingrid’s too, and then paced the long hall between them until someone opened up. Felix opened his door first, when Sylvain was headed back to Ingrid’s. He heard Felix call after him. He raised a hand in acknowledgement, and tired of waiting, he opened Ingrid’s door.

She was almost at the door when he opened it, dressed only in a tank top and shorts. At first she looked like she was about to scold him, but their eyes met and her features softened.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Sylvain just shook his head. Suddenly the words wouldn’t come. He slipped into her room and Felix followed, closing the door behind them. Sylvain sat on the edge of Ingrid’s bed and put his head in his hands and struggled to calm himself down.

“Sylvain,” Ingrid said, and she sat at his side. She put a hand on his forearm, gingerly, and Sylvain shook his head again, furiously. “What happened?”

Felix sat down at his other side, equally ginger.

“Dimitri flipped out on me,” he said. “Fuck. Fuck!”

Sylvain cried bitter tears for a moment, Ingrid folding herself around him in a hug, her head laid on his shoulder. Felix reached over and put a hand on Sylvain’s other shoulder, and just held it there, steady as stone. Sylvain kept crying for a moment, and then, when he finally sorted himself out enough to speak, he said: “I just... what do we even do?”

“I don’t know,” Ingrid said, and she leaned away for a moment and came back with a handkerchief. She blotted at his face. “I’m sorry, Sylvain. That happens sometimes. I know you know that, but––”

“Has he pushed you?” Sylvain demanded.

Ingrid looked momentarily confused, and then concerned.

“No, absolutely not,” she said. And then: “He _pushed_ you?”

“Laid me out like a fucking dinner spread,” Sylvain replied, hotly. “Just like that. Just...” He gestured a hard shove and then heaved a sigh. He felt the anger dissipate off him as he explained it to them, but it just left him feeling like a little boy rather than the man he was.

“He’s losing it,” Felix remarked. He kept a sigh behind his teeth.

“I really think we need to talk to someone about this,” Ingrid said. “One of the professors, or someone on faculty, or even... even if we have to go to the Archbishop.”

“They aren’t going to believe us,” Felix said. “He’s right as rain around them.”

“I don’t think he even means to be,” Sylvain said. “I think he just lets loose around us because we’re his friends, but then it’s like... fuck. What the fuck can any of us do? Even if he did show how fucked up he is inside around them, none of them would believe us anyway.”

“None of them will admit the crown prince of Faerghus isn’t fit to rule,” Felix agreed. “But as long as he lives, he's next in line. All of Faerghus depends on him...”

“Tell me something I don’t know, Felix,” Sylvain sniped. Felix rolled his eyes.

“I’m just...” Felix shook his head. “Never mind. I’ve said my piece a million times now.”

“Okay,” Ingrid said, tone pacifying. “So what do we do? Surely there’s something we _can_ do, or someone we can talk to. He’s our friend. We’re not going to give up on him.”

“We’re not,” Sylvain agreed. Felix looked between them dubiously, and Sylvain chose to ignore him. He knew that Felix hadn’t given up either, not _really_, and despite all his bravado, he was desperate to have their friend back again, too.

They were all in this together.

Some weeks later, Sylvain entered the library for a usual board game session. Edelgard looked up at him. That in itself wasn’t unusual; he’d noticed she always inventoried people as they came in the door. What was strange about it was that she looked secretive, and that she was alone. 

As he approached, he realized she had something moving on her lap. His imagination flourished immediately, and he craned his neck to look, making no effort to be subtle.

“What are you hiding?”

Edelgard smiled and raised her hand to reveal a black cat curled in her lap, almost hidden against her charcoal shorts. It whisked its tail, slowly, a flurry black stripe that stood out against her red leggings. That was what he had seen move. Sylvain chuckled.

“That’s not Hubert, is it?”

Edelgard touched her fingers to her lips to hide a smile, but Sylvain saw it anyway.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “He’s feeling under the weather today, so he is resting back in his room. But this cat followed me here and it was just so sweet, I couldn’t send it away...”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Sylvain said. He didn’t give a shit if a cat had gotten into the library, after all. It amused him, actually, to watch the monks and nuns shoo them away, ever-afraid of an ink well being turned over and ruining the books. Sylvain liked that kind of chaos.

He sat down across from Edelgard.

“One on one,” he said.

“Mm,” she hummed. “Unless we play like Hubert does, two on two.”

“Sure,” Sylvain said. “Makes the game longer, anyway.”

They rearranged the pieces for a new game in silence. Sylvain could hear the low, steady rumble of the cat purring, and Edelgard occasionally dipped her hand under the table to stroke it, or run a finger around the edge of its ear. Maybe, Sylvain thought, she would be distracted enough that he could get an easy win today.

“The Professor asked your friend Felix about joining the Black Eagles today,” she said.

“Yeah,” Sylvain said. “I was there when she dropped by to talk to him. He agreed. You know, I think he really likes her, or at least likes that she can give him a thorough whipping in the training arena. Ol’ Hanneman couldn’t keep up with him.”

“Yes,” Edelgard said. “She is quite talented. I enjoy having a professor who can push my limits and challenge me... I have to put in extra effort to stay ahead of her.”

(It was statements like that which made Sylvain feel as deeply delighted by Edelgard as he was terrified for her enemies. If circumstances were different, he might have even enjoyed getting eviscerated by her, because he knew she would do it so cleanly he’d be dead before a single drop of blood could hit the ground. For a while he’d even jerked off to the thought, not in like a _weird_ way, because Sylvain maintained he wasn’t hot for being murdered or anything, but in an abstract but-make-it-sexy sort of way. He’d only stopped because he was starting to worry Hubert could smell it on him and would murder him, and getting murdered by Hubert was a definite turn-off.

He was digressing.)

“Yup,” Sylvain said. “I keep thinking Hanneman’s gonna have to retire eventually. I don’t think he’s been on a horse for decades.”

“Likely not,” Edelgard agreed.

He wondered if she knew about Dimitri. She seemed to know a lot about the teachers and their thought processes, and Sylvain could easily imagine someone like Edelgard having enough clout to have Professor Byleth reporting to her, rather than the other way around. Sylvain thought that Felix would likely not request to join the Black Eagles the way he had, but he wondered if Edelgard had known enough to pull some strings.

“Uh, there’s no not-awkward way to ask this,” Sylvain said. “But did you ask the Professor to ask him?”

Edelgard fixed him with a genuinely confused look.

“No,” she said. “Why?”

He watched the confusion on her face fade. He didn’t actually need to explain why, because simply by asking her, he’d given her enough of a clue to puzzle something out, but she still watched him, waiting for more. He frowned, trying to think of what to say.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just a thought. I don’t know how well you know Felix, but even if he was pretty unhappy with the Lions, I didn’t think he’d just... leave on his own. He’s the kind of guy who gets really comfortable where he is. He has trouble making changes like that. You know?”

She didn’t look like she knew.

“Are you unhappy about the news?” she asked.

“No,” said Sylvain. “I’m happy, he’s my best friend.”

“Then I don’t understand the issue,” she said. Sylvain didn’t know what to say, and she seemed to sense that. “I get the impression that there’s something troubling you about all of this. As house leader, it is my duty to see that the students of my house are comfortable and content, and when I introduce Felix to his new class schedule I would like to be prepared for any concerns he might have.”

She leaned a little closer across the table, and fixed her lavender eyes on his with such intensity that he felt like he needed to look away, but he didn’t. He held her gaze with a lump at the back of his throat.

“If something is going on with Dimitri, or if I’ve upset him by inviting you here,” she said, “I can personally address it with him on your behalf.”

“Edelgard,” he said, a short chuckle coming out as a sigh, “I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong. You’ve looked out for me far more than I expected, and I love being with the Eagles. But even if I’m not in the Lions house anymore, Dimitri is still my friend, and I kind of... well. I owe it to him to handle it myself...”

He didn’t know what else to say. Edelgard pursed her lips, and for a moment they were both victims to a long, awkward silence. And then, with a small nod, Edelgard said: “I understand. But please promise me that you’ll tell me if there is anything I can do. You’ve grown so much as a student and as a soldier since you joined us, Sylvain, I wouldn’t want there to be any disruption to you or Felix’s studies.”

Sylvain felt oddly touched, even if he was sure there was little to nothing Edelgard could do. He thought that it would only complicate things, and there was no need to involve the Imperial Princess in affairs of the Holy Kingdom’s leadership.

“Thank you,” he said. And then, just to lighten the mood: “You know, if you _had_ asked the professor to bring Felix over, I wouldn’t be mad. It’s okay to admit that I’m not enough man for you, and though prickly, Felix _is_ rather handsome in his own right...”

Edelgard sat back in her seat, a smirk blossoming on her face. For a moment Sylvain wondered if he was going to get an ass-kicking of a lifetime, but Edelgard just brought the game board back to center, moved her piece to capture his king, and then looked back at him with a smile.

“Don’t _ever_,” she warned, “let Hubert hear you say that.”

Sylvain laughed, reaching over to tip over his king. The piece rolled across the table, and Edelgard caught it before it went off the edge.

“Duly noted, Princess,” he said. “Duly noted.”

"Are you looking forward to getting married someday, Sylvain?" Edelgard asked. "You certainly seem to spend a lot of time looking for a wife."

"Sure," he said. "Who wouldn't, when it could be with a girl like you?"

He caught her eye, and he was pleased when her smile hadn't even flickered. Was there any point in scolding him twice? She set his king back down on the board, right at home on his end, and started arranging the pieces for another round.

"I suppose it's not impossible," she said. "But it is unlikely. I have the superior title and inheritance; I'd be surprised if a great noble house of Faerghus so willingly gave over an heir of their own."

Sylvain propped his cheek up in his hand, an elbow on the table, and he grinned at her.

"So I'll give up my crest. Then that won't be a problem."

"Give it up?" she repeated, amused. "You're teasing me."

"I'm serious," he said. "I would. Who needs it? Anything for you, Princess."

Her eyes dropped to the board. He felt a surge of victory; he'd flustered her, or at least he thought so — her smile faded a little around the edges, and she sat up a little straighter. With a shake of her head, some of her glossy hair falling in front of her shoulders, she turned her attention back to the board:

"One more round, then," she said.

_Better luck next time, Sylvain._


	12. Absconding

Felix did not make for a particularly good travel companion.

Though Sylvain was privy to conversation from Felix that most people weren’t, it still didn’t make for the kind of mindless, meandering chattiness Sylvain craved. Felix didn’t like to reminisce except to poke holes in the memories, nor did he care much for dramatic storytelling, and though he loved music, he was not particularly inclined to sing along himself. Sylvain could maybe coax a song or two out of him, and on a journey like theirs, that filled mere minutes of any given day.

And for another thing, Felix did not share Sylvain’s love for horses, so he could talk quite cruelly of them. Sylvain thought he, as Horse’s owner, should have the exclusive right to make fun of the old nag. Felix was very clear about thinking otherwise. He had also developed a number of bad habits after a number of years without more skilled horsemen to keep him on his toes: Sylvain could only see Felix flick the reins instead of nudging with his heels so many times before he had to threaten to drop-kick Felix through time for remedial horsemanship classes at Garreg Mach.

And, worst of all, Felix abhorred stopping in villages. Despite wanting to get out of the saddle, he had lost much of his tolerance for socializing, and Sylvain, a man who would shrivel up and die without conversing with at least a dozen different people a day, _craved_ it. Felix would gripe every time they stopped at an inn for longer than a quarter-hour, and he would sit around exasperated as Sylvain went about his own business or tried to coax him into making new friends over beers. Eventually Felix would just drag him out, whether he still had a beer in his hand or not, and he would gripe when Sylvain balked about being cut off before he was done.

“I don’t want to be on the road forever,” Felix told him.

“I’d _love _to,” Sylvain would shoot back.

They did this several times a day.

But still, Sylvain thought he would take every single second of Felix’s grousing happily over traveling alone. And there was something kind of nice, kind of _cosy_, even, about having someone to keep you from getting chafed from being in the saddle too much, and having someone to keep you from wasting too much time, and having someone to make you learn to tolerate silence for a bit. Sylvain thought it was like a grown-up version of how they’d been in school, swapping out a thing here or there. It made him feel good. It made him feel normal, like there wasn’t ever a Sylvain or a Felix who were embroiled in a secret war they didn’t ask for.

It made him feel like things were going to be okay. Like they had all the time in the world, just an endless stretch of Empire land — Fódlan land — they could meander, griping at each other like an old married couple for the rest of their days, until finally showing up on Edelgard’s doorstep with some apology for their tardiness.

It felt happy.

But Edelgard caught up with them faster than Sylvain thought.

Well, not Edelgard herself –– Sylvain found it hard to imagine Edelgard would personally race across that much ground just to scold him for gallivanting around with Felix without sending even a single message. But news traveled fast, it seemed, and on the cusp of Aegir territory they were stopped by a detachment of soldiers who informed them they were invited to House Aegir.

_Invited_ was a polite way of saying it was your sworn duty to choose to do what your Emperor told you to do. Sylvain figured he was doing a one-off mission and considered telling them they weren’t about to detour all the way out to Ferdinand’s place just to be told to go straight on to Enbarr. Unfortunately, he also felt like he didn’t want to give Edelgard cause to dock his pay.

“We’ll accept,” Sylvain told them.

“You had to wear that dumb cape,” Felix moaned, the moment they were back on the road. “I’m sure every single person from Remire to here noticed it and _someone_ sent word. All because you couldn’t take it off.”

“Well, it’s cold out, what was I supposed to do?” Sylvain demanded. “Freeze?”

“I would have,” Felix said.

“Well _you_ go on and fuckin’ freeze then,” Sylvain said, and he’d grinned: “You can admit it, you missed me so much that you’re mad that this big cape is stopping you from gazing at every inch of me.”

“You are so ridiculous I don’t even know what to say to that.”

They’d bickered like this all the way back to House Aegir, no doubt driving the entire detachment mad, or at the very least making them concerned as to whether they would eventually kill each other.

Sylvain had thought about going to see his friends, however, and so going had a unique perk of its own: he had never been to House Aegir. He had heard enough about it to imagine he had, though, and when it came into sight, all of the laborious details Ferdinand had encumbered him with during their student days came flooding back. There were the great columns at the front, carved from real marble, you know, imported from quarries in the northern part of the Alliance. The black tile roof was_ very_ sophisticated, and it kept the place warmer in the winters. And the red! The majestic red stone, imported from somewhere else Sylvain couldn’t recall, look at how splendid it looked in the daylight, and how russet it looked at sunset! And the fountain— O, that fountain, as big as a poor man’s house, with a great statue in the middle of a man on a rearing horse, both of them with long, flowing locks and romantic tabards and armour.

Sylvain had to laugh.

“It’s uglier than he described it,” Felix said, dryly.

“Don’t let him hear that,” Sylvain said. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

Ferdinand was on the front step. From a distance he raised a hand in greeting, and when Sylvain and Felix came to a stop with the battalion, he came down the stairs with a gallant smile on his face and the usual brightness to his eyes.

“Sylvain,” Ferdinand said, pleased as ever. “I am glad to see you. And Felix, too! Well done finding him. When Edelgard sent word saying I must be on watch in case you absconded from your mission, I was terribly worried that you had fallen into trouble somewhere.”

“Nah,” Sylvain said, dismounting. Ferdinand offered a hand to shake, and Sylvain instead stepped into his space and wrapped him in a big hug with an enthusiastic back-pat to go with it. Ferdinand was stiff at first, unsure of what to do, but then he patted Sylvain’s back in turn. Sylvain beamed. He hadn’t gotten to do that to Ferdinand in far too long. He stepped back finally, holding Ferdinand at arm’s length. “How have you been? We didn’t get to chat the other week.”

“I have been well, thank you,” Ferdinand said, looking a little overwhelmed at all the personal space violations. “What happened?”

Sylvain shrugged.

“It took a couple of days to find Felix, and then he and I decided to take a detour to take out a bandit camp, return some stolen goods to the village people, and then head on to Enbarr. Why?” Sylvain grinned. “Is she mad?”

“I do not know if mad is the right word,” Ferdinand said, and then he added, more optimistically: “I think she will be delighted to hear you are on your way, safe and sound.”

“Oh good,” Sylvain said, and he turned around and glanced at Felix. “You hear that? She’s not mad.”

“Hooray,” Felix said, dryly.

Sylvain turned back to Ferdinand.

“I think we’ll be on our way, then. In the interest of her not getting mad at us,” Sylvain said.

Ferdinand frowned. He looked a little disappointed, perhaps even hurt, and Sylvain decided he should lay off a bit. It seemed Ferdinand hadn’t toughened up any over the past few years, but then again, Sylvain wasn’t surprised by that either. He’d always been soft, and he just wouldn’t be Ferdinand any longer if he wasn’t.

“I would at least like it if we could have a nice dinner before we set out for Enbarr,” Ferdinand said. His frown grew deeper, and Sylvain felt it mirrored on his own face. _We…?_ “I was not expecting to have to escort you there, especially since I just got back... this was supposed to be my vacation to spend time with my family before going back to my work in the capitol...”

And no one did guilt like Ferdinand, either. Sylvain kicked himself internally; he _should _have known Edelgard would have Ferdinand set up a perimeter in case they passed through, but he still felt a little bad for making Ferdinand march all over the south of Fódlan because he decided to be flippant. Sylvain endured Ferdinand’s big, sad eyes for about ten seconds before he threw his hands up in the air.

“Dinner! Let’s do dinner. Maybe sleep in a nice bed, too, and head out in the morning.”

Ferdinand brightened again immediately. Sylvain felt Felix glaring daggers into the back of his head.

“That’s a fine idea!” he declared. “I shall inform the cooks, and have rooms drawn up for the two of you. And baths as well, I think.”

Sylvain glanced at Felix, who couldn’t possibly have had a bath in anything warmer than a mountain river for months, if not years. Felix curled his lip in an unimpressed sneer, but then he finally dismounted, marched up the steps to join them, and thrust a hand out to Ferdinand. They shook.

“Thanks for having us,” Felix said.

Ferdinand beamed.

“I am pleased to have you both as my guests,” he said. “Right this way!”

Sylvain had never much enjoyed touring houses, and he suspected Felix was no different. Whenever he’d been carted around the great Faerghus houses as a boy, he’d always devised a way to escape: slipping through legs and running until he could explore on his own, jumping through open windows and climbing through the bushes and playing in the dirt until someone caught up with him, that kind of thing. The only place he ever cared to tour was the stables or armouries, but even then, it was no different from the rest of the manors: if you’d seen one rich person’s home, you’d probably seen them all.

Fortunately, it didn’t take much to feign polite interest, and Sylvain found himself a little curious anyway. He’d known Ferdinand for many years, after all, and he’d dragged Ferdinand on a number of wild goose chases when they were in school. Ferdinand was a simple man under all those stuffy cravats and fine porcelain tea sets and immaculately groomed eyebrows. Sylvain had thought perhaps he knew all there was to know about Ferdinand, so getting to peek into his childhood home — and his adult domain — felt like cracking open an egg and finding something other than a yolk.

(It was also fun to get to exchange secretive looks with Felix through it all, the same way they’d done as boys in Fhirdiad.)

Sylvain discovered that Ferdinand’s home was a fair bit less impressive on the inside than it was on the outside. While it had beautiful bones, with vaulted ceilings and carved wood paneling, it was rather sparsely decorated, and paintings made up most of the decor. The furniture was still fine, largely antiques that had likely belonged to Ferdinand’s family before him, but it all seemed gutted to Sylvain, as if much of it had been swept away into storage or sold off. Sold off, Sylvain suspected; much of what remained seemed either too personal or specific to the Aegir family to sell, or impossible to break down. Nothing made of precious metals or gemstones remained.

Ferdinand caught Sylvain running a finger along a completely empty sideboard that had likely once held crystal glasses.

“It is a bit empty, isn’t it?” he said.

“I noticed,” Sylvain said. “Hard times?”

Ferdinand sighed, a little resigned, but then he smiled.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I was very sad to sell so many family heirlooms, but Edelgard asked us all to make contributions from our personal estates to fund the transformation of Fódlan. She asked us to see it as an investment, but we all know what it really was — _charity_.”

Felix raised an eyebrow behind Ferdinand’s back. Sylvain ignored him.

“I was always told my family worked very hard to accumulate all of those fine things,” Ferdinand said. “And for a time, I was horrified at the idea of giving them up. But I realized that I had no real use for those things, and that many of them had been earned on the backs of the peasantry, who toiled much harder than my forefathers ever did, in the fields and the woods... So after much soul-searching, I did it! I sold them all. The gold and silver was melted down for coin, and precious gems used for barter.”

“That’s... actually pretty great of you, Ferdie,” Sylvain said. He felt a little proud on Ferdinand’s behalf, too; perhaps there was something to be said about all those shitty nobles, after all.

Ferdinand puffed up a little and nodded.

“I do not like to think of it as great,” he said. “What was truly great is that I inspired several other noble families in the south of Fódlan to do the same. You see? True nobility exists, as I always said. We will safeguard the people and support them, and never take what is not earned.”

Sylvain grinned and clapped Ferdinand on the back.

“You should be proud,” Sylvain agreed. He glanced at Felix, who rolled his eyes. Sylvain contemplated kicking him, but he didn’t.

“I am,” Ferdinand said. And then he raised a finger, as if he’d just thought of something else, and he strolled down the hall towards a grand set of double doors. At them he paused, turning to look back at the two of them, and he asked: “But do you want to see what I am most proud of?”

“Of course,” Sylvain said.

Ferdinand opened the door a crack and poked his head in while Sylvain and Felix caught up with him. He spoke briefly to someone inside, dropping in plenty of pet names, and then he glanced back at the two of them.

“I’d like you to meet my baby!” he said, and he pushed open the doors as if he were revealing a great work of art.

The room was evidently the master bedroom, and though it was as sparsely decorated as the rest of the house, the grand four-poster bed with its great red canopy made the room seem warmer, more friendly. Stretched out on that bed was Dorothea, dressed in only a dressing robe and a lovely pair of heels. One shoulder of the robe was pulled down to expose her breast, to which she clasped a nursing infant. She looked at the three of them in the doorway and smirked.

“Sylvain and Felix,” she said, in a tone of voice like she was actually saying _you two pieces of shit_, but with a _smile_. Sylvain swallowed his pride and grinned; he had missed her. Felix just averted his gaze. Dorothea continued: “I hear you’ve been making trouble.”

Ferdinand went to her bedside, and he kissed her on the cheek. He pet his child’s head too, gentle and loving, and he cuddled into Dorothea’s side.

“She’s only six months old,” Ferdinand said. “She was born in the spring, so we named her Primrose... after one of my favourite blossoms.”

Sylvain wasn’t sure how close he was supposed to get to a nursing mother, given most of his experience with that was with livestock, so he chose to sit at the end of the bed. (Being where Dorothea could easily kick him for saying anything stupid seemed like a fun gamble, too.) He peered at the little baby, who seemed to be dozing off at the nipple. _Ha, _Sylvain thought. _That'd be the life._

“I’d let you hold her but she just latched on,” Dorothea said, and she looked from the baby back to Sylvain, who nodded as if he wasn't just guessing what that meant. He tried to make sure his gaze was solely on the baby or Dorothea’s face, and not her giant, milky-pale breasts. If anything, Sylvain supposed, the baby’s mere existence said something about Ferdinand, that was for sure.

“Just as well, as I wouldn’t know the first thing about holding a baby,” Sylvain said. He caught Felix’s eye for an instant, but he wasn’t about to invite commentary. Instead, he just smiled. “But she’s pretty cute — not surprising, given the two of you — and I’m happy for you both.”

“I have been told I was a very cute baby,” Ferdinand said.

“I didn’t grow into my looks until I was at least ten, so she didn’t get it from me,” Dorothea said.

“Nonsense!” Ferdinand said. “You are the most beautiful woman in this world, and you have been radiant from the moment of your birth.”

Dorothea smiled a little, and though Sylvain had never known her to be the most gracious with compliments, here she turned her face to Ferdinand and fixed him with a loving gaze. For a moment they looked at each other as if Sylvain and Felix weren’t there at all, and it surprised Sylvain a little to see her luxuriate in something so simple and so sappy. While he felt a trickle of jealousy, he supposed he should be happy for her. Maybe she’d found what she’d always been looking for.

And hey, good for Ferdinand, too. Being a gracious loser, Sylvain owed him a congratulatory drink, at the very least.

“I suppose I should be mad at both of you, seeing as I’ll be home alone with her for a few weeks we weren’t planning for,” Dorothea said, but her voice was soft as she gazed down at the babe. “But it’s good to see you both are okay. We’ve all been wondering about you two.”

“Yeah?” Sylvain said, but he moved right along back to them: “I can say the same. It seems like everyone’s been so busy, getting married, starting families...”

He trailed. There wasn’t any more to say than that. The baby gurgled and Ferdinand cooed at her, and Sylvain felt a pit in his stomach. Ferdinand was so obviously in love with being a father that he would place this child as a greater success to him than all he accomplished as prime minister to Edelgard’s new Fódlan. Sylvain wondered who he was, to be afraid of that feeling.

“I’m hungry,” Felix said.

Ferdinand laughed.

“Then let us feed you, my friend,” he said, rising from his seat and putting a hand on Felix’s shoulder, and then casually removing it again, no doubt having _felt_ the state of Felix's clothes. “But first I’ll have a bath drawn and clothes laid out for you before dinner...”

Sylvain chuckled, rising to his feet as well. He watched Dorothea a moment longer, watched as she ran a finger very gently around the shell of the baby’s ear, which was no bigger than Sylvain’s own thumbnail. Dorothea looked up and met his eyes.

“Congratulations, really,” he said. He meant it, but there was still a bitter aftertaste, looking at a woman like Dorothea. He could have been her husband, if he’d been with the Black Eagles through the war. She would have given into him eventually. Maybe that would have been his baby. Maybe they would have made a home in Enbarr, and farmed or something, and he would have enough money to buy her a new dress every year. He smiled. “See you at dinner?"

“Of course,” she said. She smirked. “I’ll be wearing a proper dress, so get a good long look while you can.”

“That’s bait,” he said.

“You’ve learned.”

Sylvain wasn’t so sure, as his imagination was already filling in what his eyes hadn’t seen, but he grinned and turned away, following Felix and Ferdinand out.

Sylvain insisted on bathing first, since he was no doubt the cleaner of the two, and the tub was set up in his room, anyway. He dried himself off and tousled his hair until it looked like it might dry attractively, and then he laid himself out in bed half-dressed while waiting for Felix. It didn’t take Felix long, despite the state of him. When he finally rose from the tub, his long hair plastered to his head and somehow looking even wilder than before, Sylvain politely averted his eyes until Felix wrapped himself in a clean sheet to dry off. (Felix could be a bit of a crab about being looked at, though to be fair, Felix could be a bit of a crab about anything when he felt like it.) Felix sat on the edge of the tub and scrubbed at his hair until it was mostly dry. 

Sylvain stole glances anyway. Felix looked good, the kind of good that made Sylvain take a second look, and then a third when he knew Felix was suitably distracted. He did not linger on _how_ Felix looked good: he did not really know how to articulate to himself the ways in which men looked good, because his rubric was generally just whether they looked better or worse than himself.

He had to admit Felix looked better than him. He wasn’t sure whether to be jealous or proud.

Felix started picking through the outfit Ferdinand had lent him. He made an annoyed sound, so Sylvain very obviously looked over.

“Oh no,” he said.

"Don't," Felix said.

Felix started dressing himself. When he was largely done, Sylvain smirked. Felix wore a high-collared black shirt with voluminous sleeves, a cherry-red waistcoat with gold buttons, and trousers with gold lace up the sides.

“You look like such a dick,” Sylvain said. He made a gesture like pushing down on the top of Felix's head. Felix was a fair bit stockier than Ferdinand, after all, and the waistcoat fit tight for it, and the sleeves too long. "One that got squished, just a little."

“Shut up. Do you remember how to tie a cravat?”

Sylvain crawled from bed and settled himself in front of Felix. He could vaguely remember how to tie one, but he hadn’t ever done one on anyone but himself, so he had to fiddle a little anyway. Felix grew increasingly impatient with the whole process.

“I think he picked this outfit to make fun of me,” Felix said. Sylvain just chuckled, at least until Felix reached to tug the cravat loose again. “I’m changing back into mine.”

“Don’t you dare,” Sylvain said. “I just tied that! Deal with it for one night so they can launder your rank clothes.”

Felix scoffed at him, but he let it be. Sylvain finished dressing quickly.

Together they went down to meet Ferdinand and Dorothea for dinner. The happy couple was dressed nicely in what Sylvain thought was was intended to be a matched set, each outfit sharing the same buttons and embroidered motifs. They looked at each other for a long time before they acknowledged Sylvain and Felix’s arrival, and they were arguing quietly, but in that gentle way that seemed to Sylvain that they enjoyed it. It was cute in a nauseating way, and Sylvain felt a little less happy for them because of it. He figured the two of them probably curled each others’ hair and shared the same shoe collection.

And for all he’d given up in possessions, Ferdinand hadn’t seemed to have budged at all on fineries like food and wine, or even service. It felt odd for Sylvain to sit at a fancy table for a fancy meal; Edelgard had seemed to favour banquet-style meals for the Imperial Palace, and so while the food was good, it hadn't come with four or five servants hovering over his shoulder at any given moment. At the Aegir table, however, everything came served in courses and in ludicrously small portions arranged to be as artful as possible. That had never been typical in Faerghus. He saw that reflected in Felix’s face as he used his fork to budge aside a heavily seasoned chicken breast to reveal a modest portion of rice and two delicate sprigs of broccoli.

“Is it not delicious?” Ferdinand asked. “Petra sent these spices, actually. At first I thought it was too powerful for my discerning palette, but now I quite like it.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” Sylvain agreed. “How is she?”

“Wonderful, last I heard,” Ferdinand said. “We write every month. She has become quite the little politician — it is remarkable how well she’s doing, considering the sorry state of affairs before. For a time it seemed she would not even go back at all, as her people believed her to be too naturalized to the Empire, but she has done quite well.”

“That’s nice,” Sylvain said. He didn’t feel like he had any better idea of how Petra was as a person rather than a politician, but he supposed he’d just have to find out for himself. “I’d like to visit her someday.”

“As would I!” Ferdinand smiled. “I would like to see her in her own domain. We were very good to her, but there is nothing quite like seeing someone flourish within their own realm. She is inspiring to me. Many people flee when facing that kind of hard work. Not everyone has her strength.”

Sylvain felt a flicker of guilt. It must have surfaced in his face, perhaps as a fading smile or just a flinch, as Ferdinand’s expression softened immediately.

“Did you know that in Brigid, they do not have a system of lords as we do? Before, in Adrestia, each lord held a village or two, sometimes even overlapping, and then those lords would answer to the lords above them, and them to the lords above them, until finally answering to the great lord of that territory, such as the masters of House Aegir or House Varley or House Bergliez, who in turn answer to the Emperor.”

“They haven’t been gone that long,” Dorothea said, amused.

“I’ve been in the Empire the whole time, actually,” Sylvain said, amused as well.

“So what does Brigid do?” Felix asked.

“Well, in Brigid, they do everything by council. And unlike here, where we solve disputes between our people with tribunals and judgement, there they seek reconciliation above all else. I have heard that while they have a king, he and his council consider themselves common friends to their people, and so when they are called in as arbitration, it is with the expectation that there will be negotiation. They mollify the people, and see that they make the best of their circumstances rather than falling to petty vengeances or vindictiveness!”

Sylvain nodded. He glanced at Felix, who looked northing short of deadpan.

“Sounds like a ridiculous old story Ingrid told us once,” Felix said. “About how a thousand years ago, people in Fódlan solved their problems by talking about their feelings.”

Ferdinand smiled, perhaps a little uncomfortably. His kindness and assumptions of good faith could sometimes brush against Felix’s brusque honesty like a ship might screech up against an unpadded dock, and Sylvain felt it now. He glanced at Dorothea and saw her looking at Ferdinand pityingly.

“I wish we still did the same now,” Ferdinand said. “Think of how much more could be accomplished if we just talked about our thoughts and feelings. We would likely have a much greater understanding of each other.”

Sylvain nodded, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable. He didn’t like the idea of being ruled by someone with too many feelings, but he also didn’t feel particularly inclined to argue that case now. _Better to let that topic pass_, he thought.

“Not very likely,” he said, dismissively. “Not the way things are now.”

“Do you not think Edelgard could do it?” Ferdinand asked, and the genuine curiosity in his voice made him feel like he’d underestimated Ferdinand’s desire to support his emperor. Sylvain thought he should have been more flippant, or at the very least sounded more bored.

“She’s not exactly the warm and effusive person I’d consider for a head of arbitration,” Sylvain said. They were, of course, talking about a woman who had thrown all of Fódlan into war in order to liberate them from the Church of Seiros. There wasn’t much arbitration in spilling the archbishop’s blood all over the steps of Fhirdiad, no matter how just Sylvain believed her cause to be. His soul sometimes felt a little too cold to be warmed by her fickle light, too.

“I wish Edelgard were a little more honest about her feelings,” Ferdinand said, thoughtfully. “At least in front of the people. Those of us fortunate enough to have her ear know how deeply compassionate and kind she is, but the people see her as intimidating.”

“Her actions speak for themselves,” Sylvain said.

“True,” Ferdinand said. “She faces everything head on! I suppose even if she does not comfort them with her words, she has made life much easier for so many people. She understands that sometimes she must be harsh. In the aftermath of the war, so many nobles fled from their duties and had to be pressured or brought to heel... absolutely shameful.”

Sylvain pushed a piece of broccoli around his plate. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Felix frowning deeply. Dorothea sipped her wine, eyes low. Ferdinand did not sit comfortably in the silence; Sylvain could see him swilling his wine anxiously. _Uh oh_, Sylvain thought. _Here it comes_.

“Of course,” Ferdinand said, “I am not talking about you when I say that.”

“It’s okay,” Felix piped up, before Sylvain could muster up something to smooth over the situation. “You can just call us cowards and be done with it.”

Ferdinand fell silent, looking as though he’d been sucker punched. For a moment he stammered, lips moving though no sound came out, and finally he managed: “I did not intend to suggest that you are cowards...”

“You might not say it directly but I know you think it,” Felix announced. “And if you think it’s cowardice to walk away from an impossible fight, then you don’t know much about Faerghus at all.”

“Felix,” Dorothea said, a little surprised. “I never imagined I’d hear you say something can’t be won...”

“Don’t pretend it’s that shocking,” Felix said, sharply. He pushed his plate away from him and sat back in his seat, hands on the armrests as though he were ready to get up and leave. “It’s nice that you can tell all these stories about how wonderful things are in Fódlan as if they’ll ever reach Faerghus, but they won’t. Faerghus was doomed the moment King Lambert died.”

There was a hush upon them all suddenly, and Sylvain felt his appetite dwindle to nothing. The food in his mouth felt like he was preparing to swallow sand. He drained his glass of wine just to swallow it.

“Faerghus was a fine land for many years after the late king died,” Ferdinand said. “Surely the havoc wrought by the Church—”

“The havoc wrought by Dimitri,” Felix interrupted.

“Hey uh,” Sylvain piped up, raising his glass. He looked to all of them, and then looked for the sommelier. “How about this wine? Could I get some more? It’s delicious.”

“No, Sylvain,” Dorothea replied, curtly. She shot the sommelier a look and he stopped in his tracks. _All_ of service had stopped.

But Felix slid his own full glass of wine down the table with such carelessness that it sloshed over the edge, and once it was in Sylvain’s hand he continued: “People slept in the streets, starved and died of disease because Dimitri let the Church of Seiros play him like a fiddle. He wasn’t fit to be king. He wasn’t fit for any power at all, and none of us are responsible for fixing that just because we were born to the so-called noble houses.”

“Surely one man doesn’t represent all of Faerghus,” Dorothea said. “There were good, kind people in Faerghus. The nobility wasn’t just corrupt, evil, lazy—“

“That’s funny, coming from you,” Felix said. “Siding with the nobility! You’ve changed.”

(Sylvain nudged Felix under the table, pointedly, and didn't even get a sideways glance.)

“We’re not children anymore, Felix,” Dorothea said, voice growing terse. “I know it’s more complicated than that.”

“Then tell me,” Felix said. “Who were these good, kind people who can save Faerghus?”

Dorothea didn’t respond for a moment, instead looking at Felix as if he were the stupidest jerk-off to ever walk the planet. Ferdinand looked uncomfortable. Finally, Dorothea let out a single stab of disbelieving laughter.

“_You_,” she said. “_Both_ of you, you fools.”

Sylvain sipped Felix’s wine. He felt a desire to drain the glass in one go, but he held onto it instead, looking between them._ No,_ he thought. They couldn’t save Faerghus. They’d tried and failed before, and no amount of glory in saving Fódlan from the church could set the scales even.

“Dorothea,” Sylvain said. If he didn’t get a foot back in the conversation, Felix would likely get _really_ rude, and Sylvain didn’t feel like letting it get that far. He raised a hand in protest, in _self-_protest that started to feel a little bitter on his tongue: “In case you forgot, we _tried _to fix our lands—”

“Did _you_ really?” she asked. She gave him an appraising look, too.

He put the wine glass down. Felix looked at him, and Sylvain just looked at Dorothea, trying to string together an answer. Had he tried? A minute ago, he thought he had, but remembering where he was and whose wine he was drinking, suddenly it felt a little difficult to explain.

“Alright then, since you don’t want to be handled with kid gloves,” Dorothea said. “I’ll tell you _exactly_ what you did.”

Sylvain looked down at his plate.

“Both of you grew up with everything you needed. Perhaps not what you really wanted, but certainly every featherbed, every fine cloak, every hot meal that most people only dreamt of,” she continued. “All that was expected of you in exchange for your privileged upbringing was that you do good by your people when your time came.”

“Dorothea,” Ferdinand said, a touch warning, but as toothless as his baby.

“And what did you do?” Dorothea asked, her voice growing inexplicably sweeter, more dangerous. “You walked away. You declared it a lost cause, and went to live some romantic peasant life, sleeping in stables or in ruins, where you could bemoan how impossible it was to rule. And now you come into my house, sit at my table, and laugh at my husband for daring to imagine a world where people are good to each other.”

“This has nothing to do with featherbeds and romance,” Felix said. Felix sat very still, eyes fixed on Dorothea, his mouth set in a hard line.

“Doesn’t it?” Dorothea replied. “Aren’t you here at this table, wearing my husband’s silk shirt, about to sleep in a fine bed that few people in Faerghus could even dream of owning? How quickly did you abandon your bedroll the moment something finer was offered to you?”

Felix scoffed and nodded towards Sylvain.

“You’re talking about him, not me. I intend to go back to what I was doing the moment Edelgard is satisfied.” He gestured at the room around him. “I walked away from all of this. The way I see it, I had nothing to do with it. I’m not responsible for my father’s mistakes, or the mistakes of any king or church. I was disinherited. I stayed that way. I didn’t smooth-talk my way back in just to throw it to the wind.”

“Come on, Felix,” Sylvain said, hesitantly. He felt as though Felix had taken him by the neck, thrown him to the floor and put a knife against his kidneys.

“Multiple times, apparently,” Felix added.

Sylvain opened his mouth to argue, but Felix glared at him. Sylvain winced. It might have hurt less to just lose a kidney.Both Dorothea and Ferdinand looked at him, one accusing, the other disappointed.

“Okay,” Sylvain said, lacking any defence. “I’m gonna go to bed. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”

“You are a coward,” Dorothea repeated.

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

“I know,” he said. Maybe she’d let him off the hook if he just said it, but he doubted it. Dorothea never gave up on that. She had a single axe to grind and she kept it honed to a dangerously sharp edge.

Dorothea gave him a withering smile and then continued: “How much of a fight did you put up when Edelgard asked you to do this, to go find Felix?” Ferdinand opened his mouth to say something to her, but she raised a hand and he fell silent. “Because last we saw you, you swore up and down you’d never see any of us again. You called Edelgard a _bitch_ and you spat and screamed until she agreed to let you leave.”

Sylvain felt bile at the back of his throat.

Dorothea wasn’t done. She rose to her feet, so passionately that the legs of her chair scraped loudly against the floor.

“I think you spent a couple years living like most people do — as a poor person — and then the second you got tired of it, the second Edelgard gave you an opening, you walked right back into this life. Didn’t even put up a fight. I didn’t hear anything about any apologies either — she told us you just wanted money. Ha!”

(“I don’t think that was supposed to be repeated,” Ferdinand mumbled.)

“And while you ran around living in brothels and playing with horses, women like Ingrid and Edelgard laboured to look after your lands. They’re _still_ trying to clean up your messes, and Edelgard _still_ takes care of you. Did you even ask what was going on in Gautier? Of course you didn’t. Because you’re a fucking coward, Sylvain.”

“Dorothea, that's quite enough,” Ferdinand repeated, firmer, but he looked at Sylvain for an answer, too.

“Well?” Dorothea demanded.

Sylvain felt every pair of eyes in the room burning holes in his head. He felt a peculiar sickness in his stomach, and as he felt he couldn’t meet any of their eyes, he stared at his half-eaten dinner, knowing he couldn’t stomach one more bite of it.

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. “It’s true.”

“What’s true?” Dorothea demanded.

“I hated living like that,” he said. “And believe me, I know I owe Ingrid and Edelgard everything. And I owe you all an apology for how I acted. After the war, I just...”

He trailed. Was there any point in making excuses? They were all different people after the war. How was he special?

“I’m sorry, and I’m gonna go to bed.” He took his napkin off his lap and set it on the table, perhaps a little more roughly than he intended to, as he tipped his empty wine glass in the process. He scrambled to right it again, happy to be able to put his eyes on something other than his friends. “I’ll see you all in the morning.”

He got up and walked out.

Sylvain sat on the edge of his borrowed featherbed, put his face in his hands and wept bitterly. He felt a fury for himself for being dressed down so cruelly, and then a fury at himself for taking offence at any of it when it was all so true. He felt like a madman, crying about hurting other people when he was the injurer. He felt like he couldn’t stop hurting people. 

He felt like Dimitri.

That thought felt worst of all, worse than anything Dorothea could have said.

He heard the door creak open and he glanced up. Felix peered in at him. Sylvain groaned.

“Knock, man.”

“I heard you crying,” Felix said.

“I don’t care if you heard me jerking it, _knock_.”

Felix ignored him. He padded across the room towards Sylvain and stopped some feet away, just out of arm’s reach.

“She’s not wrong,” Felix said.

“Thanks Felix, that’s super fucking helpful and exactly what I wanted to hear right now,” Sylvain grumbled through his palms, and he groaned into his hands like he was in agony. He felt like he’d been stabbed. He thought he was weak. He thought everyone was better off wondering if he was even alive than knowing the truth. He wiped at his face furiously and hung his head.

“Well, what do you want me to do? Pet your hair? Stroke your cheek and tell you it’s all okay?”

“Don’t be such a dick,” Sylvain said.

“Well, apparently I look the part,” Felix replied.

Sylvain looked up at that. Felix was still wearing Ferdinand’s billowing shirt, and he had the laziest attempt at a smile on his face, so lazy that it was just one corner curled up. Despite himself, Sylvain choked out a tired laugh as his gaze fell back to his own knees.

“I’m such a fool,” Sylvain said, shaking his head, and then he raked his hair out of his face and looked up at Felix again. “Yeah, do it. Pet my hair. Tell me it’s okay.”

“No,” Felix said, flatly.

“Okay,” Sylvain said, and he flopped back in bed. Felix gingerly sat down at the end of the bed, but for a while he didn’t look at Sylvain, he just stared across the room in thought. His presence wasn’t particularly comforting, but it was better than crying alone, he supposed. It felt nice to have _someone_ by his side, anyway.

He suddenly missed Ingrid and how her immediate solution to any shed tears was to envelope him in a big hug and come up with ideas to make him feel better. She would be warm and comforting and motherly and she wouldn’t leave his side until she was sure he was okay. And then, of course, he felt bad for thinking of himself when he already owed her so much.

“Did you really snap? Before you left?”

Sylvain exhaled, long and slow. So that’s why Felix had come.

“Yeah,” he said. “Not my finest moment.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvain said. “With everything that happened, I guess I just couldn’t pretend I was okay anymore, and then that night I heard someone call me a traitor, so I just...”

Took Edelgard to task for it? Took it out on her? He didn't know. He made a helpless gesture.

Felix nodded. He didn’t offer anything else, so Sylvain sighed and added: “After you walked away, I just... I don’t know, Felix. I tried for a while. And you didn’t exactly leave gracefully, either.”

He paused.

“Do you think what we did makes us just like him?”

“We’re not like him,” Felix replied. “As long as we remember what made him the way he was, we can remain good people who did what we had to do. Even if we’ve both had...” He paused, too, and curled his lip. “Moments of weakness.”

“Okay. Eternal penance. That’s comforting.”

Felix paused. He gestured as if he might reach to Sylvain, but then he hesitated, and something crossed his face that Sylvain couldn’t quite read. He almost looked sad, and he pursed his lips for a moment and then dropped his hand entirely. Sylvain felt bitterly lonely in that moment, and he contemplated hurling himself out the window, grabbing a horse and riding until he found the first person with arms that would open to him. He just let his gaze drop. He couldn’t look at Felix any longer.

"I don't want to talk about this," he said. "I really don't."

“You should sleep, then,” Felix said. He stood up again, imperceptible, but Sylvain figured he was hurt too. Felix didn’t seem any tougher after all the years, just better at hiding it. “We have a long ride tomorrow and you’ll have to be rested.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain agreed. He paused. “Sorry for dragging you into this.”

“Don’t apologize,” Felix replied. “Just be a better man. Goodnight.”

Sylvain felt disappointed to not get the apology he wanted in return — Felix had thrown him under the cart with Dorothea, after all — but he didn’t feel he deserved it, anyway. Sylvain just nodded and repeated his own goodnight back. Felix left without another word, leaving Sylvain to drag himself to his feet, undress, and then fall back into bed. He snuffed out the lantern and laid there, staring at the canopy on the bed and imagining shapes into the darkness. His throat felt tight, but he could breathe.

He listened to the crickets outside, and the soft cry of the baby, muffled by the walls; he could hear Dorothea singing, too, singing a lullaby, and she carried on even after the baby hushed. Her voice permeated the air, running down halls and slipping under doors. Sylvain breathed in and out, in and out, and then he, too, fell asleep.


	13. The Ministry of Personal Trauma

The days on the road to Enbarr passed in a haze. Sylvain barely remembered saying a terse goodbye to Dorothea on the front steps of the Aegir home, and then barely remembered getting back into the saddle, and then barely remembered three days worth of travel. He might as well have drank the whole way back, because then at least he might have been chattier company for Ferdinand, who seemed remarkably less pleased than he had the night before they left. Maybe he’d thought they’d have a grand old time, but it ended up being a chore that took him away from his baby girl and beautiful wife for another week.

The problem with being known, Sylvain thought, was that those people who adored you and loved you and called you a dear friend also knew every ugly thing about you and could turn it on you in an instant. Somehow, he’d forgotten how biting Dorothea could be. Somehow, he’d also forgotten what had prompted him to run away from all of them in the first place.

It wasn’t them. It was _him_.

Going back to Edelgard’s court felt particularly awful with the memory of what he’d said to her drudged up. It wasn’t like he had ever really forgotten that, either. His memory of what he’d said and done at the time felt like he’d watched someone else do it, but the shame was his and his alone, and that was shame of all varieties. Shame for being a betrayer, at betraying one of his best friends. Shame for screaming at the person who had given him safe haven numerous times over his life and only ever asked him to be the best person he could be. Shame at himself for not being a man about it all, for instead crying in the middle of court and stumbling around shouting and sobbing. Shame for reacting with violence when they didn't want him to leave. Shame for not recognizing that they tried to stop him from leaving _because_ they cared about him.

A long time ago, he’d blamed crests for everything, especially for ruining his life and his relationships with women. Now, it was agony to admit maybe he was the problem all along.

He wasn’t even sure what it was that _made_ him the problem. It was like his whole being, his entire entity, was just a disaster waiting to be inflicted on the world. He was born into that role.

(It sounded so dramatic to think of it that way, but it was how he felt, at least in the blindingly painful moments where he contemplated his own existence. All the more reason, he thought, to just live every hedonistic desire and have a good time when he could.)

They arrived at the city gates around mid-day, Felix dozing in the saddle and Sylvain staring blankly ahead of himself. The wonder of Enbarr was gone. He felt like a dead man walking, or, he supposed, a dead man riding.

“Well,” Ferdinand said, cheery in that way that suggested he was going to be irreparably devastated if they ever darkened his door again. “Here we are. I am going to turn right around and head back home to eke out more of my vacation, so we’ll just wait here until Hubert arrives. He will escort you into the city.”

Sylvain’s attention focused.

“Alright,” he said. This was punishment, he thought. He should have kept the stupid detachment and gotten Felix and come right back. Then he wouldn’t be dealing with fucking Hubert again. Sylvain assumed Hubert _somehow_ already knew everything that had transpired, too, so he expected to maybe just get knifed.

Sylvain watched Ferdinand sigh — a rare thing, given how doggedly cheerful he tried to be. He felt a wave of guilt wash over him again. Sylvain reminded himself to not be an asshole if he expected to continue being known. He reached back and remembered traveling with Bernadetta, and finding Felix, and all the crazed optimism he’d felt right up until that dinner party. He curled his fingers around the mere wisps of it within his grasp and plucked up his pride.

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “Ferdinand.”

Ferdinand smiled tightly.

“Yes?”

“Thanks for taking us here,” Sylvain said. “Uh. I know this was shitty for you, and I know I fouled up your plans. But I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for us, and your hospitality, and... well, your wife’s eye opener. I needed that.”

Ferdinand sighed, but this time it was with a small smile, and a pleasant look in his eyes. Sometimes he could look so wistfully happy that it made Sylvain feel funny.

“That is quite alright,” he said. “It was my pleasure to help out however I could. I know you have not had an easy time of it, ever since we were youth at Garreg Mach. Even if things don't always go as we planned, I do admire your strength, that you can still stand before us today.”

“We all went through war,” Sylvain said. “I don’t want excuses made for... well. You know.”

“I know, and we certainly did,” Ferdinand agreed. “It was a hard war on us all. But, that said, most of us only fought on one side of it. You were with our enemies up until nearly the very end, and that certainly takes its toll.”

Sylvain nodded. He couldn’t argue with that.

“I hope you find some peace and meaning, Sylvain,” Ferdinand said. The earnestness in his voice was so intense that Sylvain felt, for at least one second, that peace was being spoken into his life. “And you as well, Felix.”

Sylvain glanced back at Felix, who was no longer sleeping, and now watched them quietly, still slouched a little in the saddle. Felix nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I hope so too, Ferdinand,” Sylvain said, and he leant across the void between their horses to give Ferdinand a hearty clap on the back. “You take care on the road home, huh? You’ve got that baby to look forward to, and probably a lot more of them where that came from.”

Ferdinand choked out a laugh.

“Sylvain,” he scolded, flushing red.

“Aww, come on,” Sylvain said. “You bagged Dorothea. Any man who gets a ring on her finger gets lifetime bragging rights.”

Ferdinand looked away, as if the very idea had overcome him, but he did look at least a little proud of himself. He declared: “I love her so much I still cannot believe my good fortune that she would call me hers!”

Sylvain laughed. It felt good to laugh.

“Good,” he said. “Don’t swoon right off your horse. You gotta— oh. Hey, Hubert.”

Hubert had appeared just ahead of them in a flash of light. To Sylvain’s eye, he looked about the same as he always did, which was to say he looked like he knew something everyone else didn't. Generally, Sylvain assumed this _something_ was some complicated political machination, or some impending policy about to sweep some prick nobles off the map, or whatever else was beyond Sylvain’s ken. Now, however, he assumed that look was just for him, and that it was specifically about what level of hell Edelgard was going to unleash on him.

“The wayward son returns,” Hubert said. “We prepared your detachment well.”

Sylvain did not know what that meant, and he decided he did not want to know what, exactly, they had been prepared with. He chose instead to simply be happy that Hubert hadn’t arranged for them to knock him out or kill him at the first sign of resistance — that they let him walk away at all felt a little heartening in hindsight, somewhere between being trusted and being a free man.

He felt blindsided that Edelgard had trusted him with anything at all.

“Hubert,” Ferdinand said, very pleasantly. “Thank you for coming to retrieve them. Had I more time, I would have loved to have teatime with you, but I’m afraid my wife will be upset if I dilly-dally.”

(_Dilly-dally_, Sylvain thought. _Dilly-dally._)

“Next time,” Hubert said. “I will be looking forward to it. Send Dorothea my regards.”

“I shall,” Ferdinand said. “And mine to Edelgard and Byleth!”

Hubert nodded, and then his good will evaporated when he turned his attentions back to Sylvain and Felix. His piercing eyes landed on Felix in particular, examining him. Felix never seemed to like that kind of attention from anyone, let alone Hubert; Sylvain thought that it was an testament to just how scary Hubert could be, that he could send Felix slinking away like a scolded dog, this time sliding from the saddle and lingering on the horse’s other side.

“I suppose we’ll have to go to the tailor again,” Hubert said, dryly. “And the barber.”

Felix hidden behind the horse, Hubert looked to Sylvain for confirmation.

“You know what, yeah,” Sylvain said. “Let’s do that. I can’t look at that ugly mop for one more second.”

Anything to put off seeing Edelgard.

Felix looked like a new man in no time. After a quick visit to the tailor, and some time killed around the marketplaces while the tailor cut and refit some clothes to better suit Felix’s figure, Hubert marched them into the Imperial Palace. There, Hubert led them up to the door leading to the living quarters, and he gestured for Sylvain to go in. It felt a little bit like a _go to your room_ sort of business, and Sylvain frowned.

“We’re not going to see Edelgard?”

“You aren’t,” Hubert said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. Sylvain hadn’t been sure it was possible to feel more like a child. “Your work is done. I will continue with Felix to see Edelgard, and meet with you to arrange your payment later.”

Sylvain knew, in that instant, that Edelgard was furious. He wasn’t sure if he should just go with it or if he should insist on going with them and present himself to Edelgard with an apology. He felt that he owed it to her; if not for his more recent nonsense, then for what he’d said to her years ago. He suddenly thought that he _wouldn't_ have left without apologizing in some way, and his heart sank when he couldn’t convince himself that he had. He absolutely hadn’t.

But then again, wouldn’t she just be more angry if he presented himself to her anyway, after she’d likely expressly told Hubert to keep him from her sight?

No, he had to apologize. And if he thought about it too much, he would be too much of a coward to go through with it.

“I understand that she’s mad at me, but I think I should apologize to her,” Sylvain said. He didn’t much feel like entreating his feelings to Hubert of all people, and Felix wasn’t going to be any help at all on that front, but he felt like maybe he should just get it over with.

“I’ll speak with her and see whether she’s in the mood to tolerate you,” Hubert said.

That landed like a javelin through Sylvain’s heart. He was sure his wince was visible from the other end of Fódlan. Felix grimaced, and Sylvain could only nod.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it,” Hubert said, with the gall to sound a little amused. Sylvain had a thought that Edelgard was about to decapitate him, and that his head would roll down every stair in Enbarr before landing in a ditch somewhere, wherever it would most efficiently fertilize the fields. Hubert would laugh the whole time.

Felix nudged him.

“Calm down,” he said.

“I _am_ calm.”

Hubert led them back down the hall they’d come from and back through the bustling halls to the throne room. The doors were big enough that a dragon could pass through them with ease, perhaps just by tucking in the wings, but Hubert bid them to wait and entered in through a much smaller door cleverly hidden within the ornamentation on the bigger door. Sylvain chuckled when it opened, and Felix fixed him with a questioning look.

“This place is so fancy,” he said. “Doors within doors. Don’t ever say I don’t take you anyplace nice, Felix.”

“Shut up,” Felix replied.

“You’ve said that about fifty thousand times since I found you, you have to man up and accept the truth,” Sylvain informed him. “I will never shut up.”

“I know,” Felix said. “It’s annoying.”

But Felix smiled a little, and Sylvain thought he looked quite handsome, especially in clothes more befitting his station, and his hair neatly tied back. The shorter locks in the front were arranged nicely around his face. Sylvain reached and tucked one behind his ear. Felix made an annoyed sound but didn’t swat him away.

“You’re not the tiniest bit curious about what she has to say?”

Felix glanced at him, and for a second he seemed to think Sylvain had been joking. When Sylvain could only wait for an answer, Felix frowned deeply.

“What?” we said. “No. Not in the slightest.”

Sylvain figured that Felix was too stubborn to admit that he was both curious and missing life amongst friends. The alternative was that he was genuinely just a committed friend to have come all this way to dig Sylvain out of the pit he’d found himself in. He contemplated telling Felix that, just to rib Felix for liking him so much, but he decided against it when Hubert reappeared again through the hidden door. Sylvain’s nervousness resurfaced as rapidly as Felix had chased it away.

“Come sit,” Hubert said, gesturing to some armchairs in the corner. “She’s taking an audience right now, so you will have to wait.”

They did so. Hubert sat with them, plucking a news pamphlet from the front of his waistcoat, and he settled into comfortably ignoring the two of them. Sylvain sank into his armchair, feeling like he would definitely nap right there if he wasn’t positively wired. Felix sat next to him. Sylvain thought he and Felix looked like little boys being brought in for a scolding by Professor Hanneman.

Long moments passed. Mere seconds felt like an eternity. Sylvain watched the people in the hall bustle to and fro, carrying folders or other documents, or wooden tool caddies or building supplies.

“Why do I have to wait for her when she wants _my_ audience?” Felix remarked, quietly. “I can’t imagine she has anything to say to me that I either don’t already know or actually would want to do.”

“I don't know,” Sylvain said. He felt an ugly reminder that Felix had spent much more time with Edelgard during the war than he had, and maybe Edelgard simply preferred working with him for it. Sylvain had ultimately just made things worse, hadn't he? Sylvain pushed those thoughts away with more suggestions: "You are the best swordsman in probably all of Fódlan. Maybe she wants you to teach. Or maybe she has a mission like an assassination just for you.”

He felt Hubert’s gaze on him, but every time he glanced up, Hubert’s attention was fixed on the pamphlet. Sylvain looked at it. Judging by the headlines, it was a rumour rag, the kind with salacious notes on the nobility and their proclivities. He felt a smile tug at his lips. He liked knowing Hubert had shitty taste in reading material.

“I can’t imagine there’s anything like that which could not be done by any number of us,” Felix said. “Besides. I doubt assassinations are on her table. You’re overthinking this.”

“True,” Sylvain said. “You are curious, though.”

“I’m not,” Felix said.

Sylvain frowned.

“Speculating is part of curiosity,” he said.

“Could you stop? This isn’t even your message to be curious about,” Felix said. “You were just the delivery boy. Whatever it is, I don’t care, I just want to hear it and then leave.”

“Delivery boy? Ouch,” Sylvain replied. “And you’re that eager to get away from me, huh? I’m hurt. After everything I did for you...”

“If you keep bothering me like this, I'll hope she kicks you out of the meeting.”

Sylvain knew there was a fine line between joking and seriousness with Felix, and the way he tended to speak with a smirk made it extremely hard to tell sometimes even for friends, but he knew that Felix wouldn't side with Edelgard over him. He would have bet money on it in that very moment.

“Hubert,” Sylvain said. “Help me out here. It’s something cool, right?”

“Pardon me?” Hubert asked, and then, without even looking up from the pamphlet in his hands, he said: “Get your feet off the coffee table.”

Sylvain did as he was told. He was about to repeat his request when Hubert suddenly sat up straighter, tucked away the pamphlet and rose to his feet.

“We can go in,” Hubert said, striding away.

“How the _fuck_ do you do that...?” Sylvain trailed, but he sighed and rose to his feet to follow.

Sylvain had yet to see the throne room. He was surprised to find it rather unimpressive; large tapestries had been hung over much of the walls, leaving Sylvain to wonder what hung behind them. All of the tapestries but one were plain canvas, and the one that stood out amongst them was the massive tapestry with the double-headed eagle of the Adrestian empire, but it was not the same eagle that the Empire had hung at any other point in Sylvain's lifetime. It was an ancient variation, one that had existed well before Fódlan had split off into three lands, and Sylvain marvelled at it. It hung from fifty feet in the air and glittered in the light; it was strung with glass beads. Sylvain imagined it could not weigh less than a hundred pounds. His gaze followed it down to the great stage at its foot, and the marble stairs coming down to the main floor. He supposed that stage had once held a throne, but now it had a long, elegant table, with chairs arranged all around it. It was not unlike the one he’d sat at occasionally at Garreg Mach, with its straight-backed chairs and rich polished wood.

He could see Edelgard, too, standing with a number of men and women. They ran the spectrum from military leaders well-dressed in ceremonial armour and tabards to merchants in their modest finery and labourers with the mud dusted from their clothes best they could. Sylvain thought they were the strangest looking council he had ever seen.

“A fine sight, isn’t it?” Hubert intoned right by Sylvain’s ear, making the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

“_Must_ you do that?” Sylvain muttered.

He felt Hubert’s smirk as he circled around behind him, stopping at the other side.

“It amuses me when you _jump_,” Hubert said.

Sylvain shook it off and glanced aside at Felix: “Stop snickering, asshole, he’ll do it to you next.”

“You did jump,” Felix said.

“Shh,” Hubert hushed them. “Look. Every morning, Edelgard selects a collection of people at random, and hears their personal stories and concerns for Fódlan. People have begun to travel from all ends of the continent to have a chance of being selected.”

Sylvain rolled his shoulders uncomfortably and tried to keep his attention on the impending conversation. He felt nervous even without Hubert taking jabs at him, and the more he thought about it, the more nervous he felt. He had fulfilled his task, and whatever mission of great import she had prepared next was for Felix, but suddenly he didn’t want to be set aside as a messenger boy. He wanted to be involved. He wanted another mission so he could re-earn her trust, while also wanting to flee as far as possible from this place. He missed that life. He _hated_ that life. He just wanted to be with his friends, while never once–– _why the _fuck_ had he ditched the detachment and annoyed Ferdinand and—_

“Stop fidgeting,” Felix muttered. “You’re driving me insane.”

“I’m so curious,” Sylvain whispered. “It’s killing me.”

“Then die already,” Felix said. “I can’t think straight with you vibrating all over the place.”

“Wait,” Sylvain murmured, “Are _you_ nervous?”

But then Edelgard was strolling towards them, her council dispersing. Sylvain felt his heart lodge itself at the base of his throat. Hubert bowed. Felix did the same, and then elbowed Sylvain in the ribs hard enough that he remembered to bow, too.

“Sylvain, Felix,” she said.

Sylvain exhaled. He reminded himself that she had, actually, right before his eyes, killed greater men than him, and she had the baffling ability to look perfectly human while doing it. He couldn’t fathom how he had ever wanted to sleep with her, but he wished in that very moment that he could just be a guy who wanted in her pants, instead of feeling like he was going to shit his own.

But when she looked at him, something in her expression softened, deeply exasperated. He felt like he was standing in front of his mother again, and he’d been caught peeping on some lady for the third time that week. She _knew _he was nervous_._ He _knew_ she knew.

“Welcome back,” she said.

“Thank you,” Sylvain said. He breathed. “Lady Edelgard, I just wanted to apologize for...”

She raised a hand and he fell silent.

“I’ll speak with you later,” she said. “For now...” She turned her eyes to Felix, and Felix bowed his head again briefly. “Welcome to Enbarr, Felix. It’s been some time.”

Felix nodded.

“A lot has changed,” he said. “Why am I here?”

Edelgard smiled, bringing a hand to her mouth to hide a laugh, and then she ruled herself calm again just as quickly, the clouds passing before the sun. She looked between the two of them.

“Straight to the point,” she said. “I appreciate that. Come, let’s sit.”

Edelgard gestured towards the table at the back of the room.

Edelgard selected a seat on the end of the table, and Felix and Sylvain sat at each side, across from each other. Hubert took a seat next to Sylvain, and Sylvain imagined it was so he was in easy reach for a state-ordered knifing should he say something stupid. That was fair, Sylvain supposed. Hubert would at least make it fast. Painless.

“I have a feeling you’ll find this request rather unusual,” Edelgard said, looking to Felix. “But I’ve searched my heart for answers for several months and have yet to come up with anyone more suitable for the task.”

Felix nodded, curtly.

“It’s about Dimitri,” Felix said.

“Yes,” Edelgard said, a little more quietly.

So that’s why the crafty little bastard hadn’t been curious. He’d known, somehow. It seemed so beautifully simple to Sylvain in hindsight, but with Dimitri dead and gone for five years, he thought there was nothing more to say or do on the subject. Sylvain’s curiosity burned brighter.

_Hey_, Sylvain thought. Why wasn’t _he...?_

“In one of your letters to me during the war, you described Dimitri having an episode where he threatened you with a dagger,” Edelgard said. “Perhaps you remember that incident even now, but in the letter, you mentioned that he described it as...”

She trailed.

“Too important to waste on slitting my traitorous throat,” Felix finished for her.

“Yes,” she said. “My apologies. I understand I may be dredging up uncomfortable memories for you.”

“It’s fine,” Felix said. “He threatened us a lot in those days.”

“Yes,” Edelgard agreed. “He did.”

Sylvain felt his stomach turn a very hard, very painful somersault. He decided he was happy that this mission, whatever it was, was for Felix. Even listening to it was enough to dredge up memories of his own time in Fhirdiad during the war, and they left a film of bile on the back of his throat.

“Even so,” Edelgard said. “I believe the dagger is one that I gave him, and your letter was the last mention I have found of it. It was not on his person when we searched his body, but I have reason to believe he might have kept it very close to him.”

Felix exhaled, long and slow. Sylvain could see him reminiscing, and none too fondly. He looked away from Edelgard for a moment and then nodded.

“You want the dagger,” he said.

“Correct."

There was another long beat of silence. Despite Edelgard’s calm demeanour and straight, unsmiling mouth, her eyes seemed sad. Perhaps a little hopeful, too, in how she leant just slightly towards Felix. Sylvain felt he shouldn’t be there, but he also felt no desire to excuse himself.

“You went through all this nonsense, retrieving him, sending him,” Felix said, gesturing at Sylvain loosely, “and dragging me away from my life so you can ask me to find you one stupid dagger?”

Edelgard pursed her lips so briefly that Sylvain thought it might be a trick of the eye.

“Yes,” she said, firmly. “It’s that important.”

“So important that you want me to... what?” Felix asked. “Go to Fhirdiad? Dredge up even more old memories of the second worst time of my life and root around in his old things? It’s probably long gone. Maybe he got rid of it well before the Empire took the Kingdom.”

“You may be right that he got rid of it, but I ordered his rooms sealed when we took Fhirdiad,” she replied. “Everything that belonged to Dimitri is still there, collecting dust. If it exists, it's there.”

Felix frowned, and then he sighed and shook his head.

“Why don’t you go yourself?”

“Do you think _I_ should be the one to rifle through his possessions?” Edelgard replied, and there was something on her voice that made Sylvain’s skin alight with goosebumps. Felix seemed to catch it too, because he sat up a little straighter and met her gaze again. “Felix. I’m asking you because I trust you. I don’t want to send just anyone to touch his things. I want someone who will...”

She trailed.

“I want someone who will handle them with respect. There are likely many, many sensitive things in there. Things that no one would understand but you and I.”

Sylvain fought the urge to interject.

“Ingrid’s that much closer to Fhirdiad,” Felix said. “Send her.”

“She's already there,” Edelgard said. “She has been overseeing the city's security, and the next stages of rebuilding. She is ensuring that the people of the former Kingdom have their needs met as we go through this transition, and so, as you can imagine, her hands are very full. When I suggested finding you, she agreed. She'd like to see you, too.”

Sylvain swallowed his breath. Ingrid. He didn’t know if Edelgard would allow him to go with Felix — he supposed she couldn’t stop him — but it felt that much more complicated if Ingrid was there.

He wasn't sure if he had the guts to face her yet. It felt even more daunting when he couldn't ignore the unspoken detail there: she notably had not asked for Sylvain's presence, and Sylvain had not been invited to go.

But Felix, on the other hand, was running out of excuses not to, especially with Ingrid's desire to see him. Sylvain didn’t imagine Edelgard would accept a plain_ no_, though he knew she would have to. Nothing could convince Felix of something he didn’t want to do.

“I didn’t know you were so sentimental,” Felix said. He said it as though it were a bad thing, but Edelgard responded with the smallest, most delicate smile.

“I prefer to think of it as closure,” she replied.

“I have told my lady that I would gladly go in your stead,” Hubert said, his voice a low rumble that prompted Sylvain to startle. He’d forgotten Hubert was even there. “But she insists that it is you.”

“I do,” Edelgard said.

“And if I don’t?” Felix asked.

“Then nothing,” Edelgard said. “Life goes on, and I make whatever alternate arrangements I can. But I imagined maybe you would want closure, too.”

“I don’t need it,” Felix said. “Already have it.”

Sylvain grit his teeth a little but said nothing. That, he thought, was the biggest crock of horse shit he’d heard in his life. A man just didn’t find peace by killing petty thieves on rural roads, or by sleeping alone in a windmill, or by having no one at all to talk to but his own self. He remembered Felix leaving Enbarr all those years ago and thought that closure didn’t hang out in a burned out village, and that you could live in one for a thousand years and still not find it.

“I implore you to stay a few days, rest, and think about it,” Edelgard said, gently. “If you decide you won’t, I’ll gladly send you back to Remire with whatever you would like as compensation for your time and your courtesy in coming to see me. But I won’t take a no right here.”

Felix shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “Is that everything?”

“It isn’t, actually,” she said. “There’s one more thing I would like you to look for.”

“Okay,” Felix said, sinking back into his seat and folding his arms. Something a little petulant surfaced in him, and he added: “Any of his other personal things you want, now that you have the whole kingdom? Maybe I can dig up his bones, too? Bring them to you so you can make a pretty little tiara out of them, and _really_ conquer all those memories?”

Sylvain _felt_ Hubert sit forward a little, but didn’t dare take his eyes off Edelgard. She seemed to have no reaction at first, but then she exhaled a little hard, the tiniest little _tch_ through gritted teeth. Felix had scraped deep enough to find a nerve.

“When I was a girl, I was in Fhirdiad for a number of years,” she said, tightly. “I’d like you to find the quarters I stayed in.”

Sylvain’s thought process ground to a halt. He looked to Felix, who had traded in his defiance for a look of equal confusion.

“Whoa, really?” Sylvain said. All eyes turned to him; he had forgotten, for a moment, that he wasn’t really invited to speak in her presence. He barrelled on anyway: “That’s crazy, Felix and I practically grew up there. Why didn’t you ever mention that before?”

Edelgard hesitated. Sylvain saw it and didn’t understand it. His fleeting intrigue vanished. Suddenly he felt like something was wrong, and he saw his exact feeling mirrored in Felix, who sat up straighter again, brows knitted.

“I was a political prisoner,” she said. “It’s not a pleasant story, and I would prefer not to reminisce on it too much, but... I would like to know what became of the rooms we were kept in, if you can find them.”

Sylvain sat forward in his seat.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “We had political prisoners? In the castle?”

“Yes,” Edelgard said, tersely. “I suspect you would have been too young to understand, Sylvain.”

“King Lambert had political prisoners,” Felix said, like he didn’t believe it either. It almost seemed comforting to him a beat later, when he muttered: “Faerghus was more rotten than I thought.”

“Did _you_ understand at the time?” Sylvain asked, frowning.

“As much as I could at a tender age,” she said. Sylvain tried to imagine her as a small child and struggled to even fathom it. “I understand that you have questions, but I may not be able to answer them. There are many things I don’t know myself.”

“Was it a Petra situation, or were you... imprisoned?” Sylvain asked.

A silence fell on the three of them, and that alone was damning. Against his will, Sylvain’s mind conjured an image of children confined to a dungeon cell, or manacled to iron rings bolted to the walls, or picking bits of potato or chicken bones off the floor with their fingernails before the rats could get them. It hurt his heart just to think about it; he hurt for her in that instant, even without knowing the answer, because he could see it on her face. _Shit_, he thought.

“Edelgard...”

“Do not trouble yourself too much with the details,” Edelgard said, calmly, but Sylvain could see the tension in her shoulders grow taut as a bowstring, and beside him, Hubert seemed to radiate a quiet, roiling anger. Edelgard shook her head slowly. “I would not have you look at me and see a victim, and Fhirdiad as it was then is no more — I have already conquered that particular demon. My concern now is for the future, and selfishly, my own peace of mind.”

“Did Dimitri know?” Felix asked. Sylvain didn’t understand the connection, but Felix seemed intent on it, watching Edelgard unblinking.

“No, not about that,” Edelgard replied. “I never told him. But we did meet a few times, before my uncle took me underground. I don't feel we need to talk about that.”

Felix nodded, though he did not look particularly convinced. Sylvain felt confused.

“You want us — Felix — to find a room?” he asked. “What does the room have to do with it? You didn’t see it when we were there at the end of the war?”

“A lot was going on, Sylvain,” Edelgard said. “You know that. I didn’t really have the time or, admittedly, the energy to go digging around in the dungeons.”

“The dungeons of Fhirdiad castle were sealed off before our arrival anyhow,” Hubert said. “We just left them that way. We had a continent to unite, and we are _still_ working on eliminating the last of the Church of Seiros' resistance up North, as well as the remnants of the shadow organizations that plagued the old governments."

“Yeah,” Sylvain said, “but...”

“What happened before does not matter,” Hubert informed him. “But now, with things settling and Edelgard’s reforged Fódlan coming into focus, there is some time to address her personal concerns.”

_Outsourcing your own closure,_ Sylvain thought. The Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of the Imperial Household, and the Ministry of Personal Trauma. Crazy. He thought if he were Felix, he'd ask for a title as payment, just for a lark. Or…

“Well,” Sylvain said. “If Felix won’t do it, I will.”

Edelgard looked at him, a touch surprised. She said nothing for a moment, so Sylvain pressed on: “Seriously. I want closure, too. I’ll go to Fhirdiad, and see Ingrid, and do whatever it is you need me to.”

For a moment they were all silent, and in that moment, Sylvain regretted offering it, because fear flooded him at the mere idea of having to face down any of it. Why did he open his big mouth? Suddenly it felt like Dimitri’s ghost was leaning on him and pressing him into the floor, and that he would surely suffocate before Edelgard would agree. But why would she agree, anyway? She’d surely asked Felix for a reason, and he was certain he wasn’t ready to bear that burden for her, not when he couldn’t bear his own––

“Thank you, Sylvain,” Edelgard said. She paused and shook her head. “I’m very grateful for the offer.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Sylvain said. He knew she hadn't accepted it, but he was going to pretend she had until she insisted otherwise. “When I get back with that dagger and whatever else you want, then you can thank me. However you want.”

Edelgard sighed, her gaze dropping.

“Somehow I don’t think we’re going to be on the same page,” she said, lightly. “But I will. I appreciate it, Sylvain.”

Sylvain could feel both Hubert and Felix glaring daggers into every inch of him. Sylvain steeled himself.

“Great,” he said to Edelgard.

Edelgard looked to Felix.

“As I said, think about it,” she said. “Perhaps you and Sylvain would enjoy more time together, and at worst, he will see you off to Remire.”

Felix just nodded.

Edelgard glanced at Hubert, who rose to his feet and bowed curtly.

“I’ll show Felix to his room,” he said. “Would you like me to send Sylvain as well, or do you wish to speak with him further?”

_Oh shit_, Sylvain thought. He hoped his offer was sufficient counterweight to whatever punishment she had in mind for his desertion, or the way he had spoken to her, or any of it.

“I’ll speak with him a moment longer,” Edelgard said. "Then you may settle him."

“I shall wait outside the door with Felix, then,” Hubert replied. He strode off, and Felix rose and followed without another word. He didn’t even give Sylvain a look, and that was how Sylvain knew that Felix was very, very cross with him. He didn't have time to think much about Felix, however, because he was within thirty steps of being left alone with Edelgard.

He hoped that offering to go to Fhirdiad for her would weigh on her decision of how best to yell at him.

When the door closed on the other end of the hall, Edelgard looked at him, and she said nothing. Sylvain exhaled, long and slow. He hoped if he looked penitent enough, she’d notice how cute he was and take pity.

“You’re probably pretty mad about my ditching the detachment,” Sylvain said. “So uh... I’m sorry about that. I need to take more responsibility.”

Edelgard just frowned.

“I’m a little annoyed, perhaps, and confused as to why you must make everything more complicated than it needs to be, but I’m not mad,” she said. “Who told you I was mad?”

He hesitated.

“I guess Hubert implied it,” Sylvain said, but he also knew Hubert liked batting him around like a cat would a mouse. “I just thought...”

He trailed. She raised a brow at him, and then seemed to deflate a little. He didn’t like tothink he’d offended her, either, and the longer the silence lingered, the more tired she seemed by him.

“It wounds me when you assume I’m waiting for an opportunity to strike you down or punish you,” Edelgard said. “After all these years, I thought you would know me a little better than that.”

Ah. Sylvain hung his head a moment, and he nodded.

“I get you,” he said. “Sorry. For the wild goose chase, and for treating you the way I did before I left… all you’ve really done is look out for me. Nobody else in our house has given you even a fraction of the grief I have... honestly, I think you should have just killed me years ago.”

Edelgard sighed, and she reached over and laid a hand on his forearm. It felt about as bracing as it did likely to push him away.

“Really,” he said, dropping his gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” she said, firmly. “I appreciate the apology deeply, but I won’t sit here and listen to you abuse yourself in my name. And this grieving for yourself — really, Sylvain. You would serve yourself better by embracing your strengths instead of fixating on your worst qualities."

Sylvain cringed, but before he could try a better apology, she continued:

"It makes me wonder if you’re even well. Are you or are you not the man who stood with me on the Tailtean Plains and helped liberate the world?”

Sylvain chuckled bitterly. It bubbled up from him without warning, and Edelgard gave him a puzzled look when he lifted his head to look at her again. She patted his forearm once, and then again, as if that might possibly soften what she’d said to him.

“Edelgard,” he said, “you’re… not very comforting. But I get your point. Yes, I am that man. I think.” She opened her mouth to reply, and he added, very quickly: “I am. I am that man.”

Edelgard shook her head. She looked as though she had a very terrible headache, but it was all she could do. She withdrew her hand from his forearm and composed herself, as though touching him had been some sort of heroic ordeal. It was almost touching to Sylvain, knowing she’d done it anyway.

“Let us hope,” she said, “we both find some closure out of this. I’d like for us to be friends, as we once were.”

Sylvain nodded.

“I’d really like that,” he agreed. "Maybe we could even get together for board games again."

“Perhaps someday. But now I’d like you to go rest, as you’ve had a long trip,” she bid him. “Clear your head, and stay out of trouble for a bit. I’ll see you at dinner, perhaps.”

“Sure,” he said. “Edelgard?”

He already had her attention. She just continued to watch him, her eyes a little more intense than the rest of her tired expression.

“Is Ingrid… uh. Does she even…?”

He wasn't sure what he was asking.

“I don't think she's given up on you, if that's what you're asking,” Edelgard said, and she spoke slowly, like she was revealing something she hadn't wanted to touch upon. “But she's made it clear to me that she doesn't want to see you, which is why I am hesitant to send you to Fhirdiad. But, I suppose, if you choose to go anyway, she will be glad to see you alive just the same.”

Sylvain exhaled, and he felt a part of his soul fly out in the process, rising into the grand ceilings and catching in some dark nook, never to come down again.

“Good to know,” he said. “Good to know.”


	14. Hunger

Sylvain did not go to his rooms immediately. Overcome by a restlessness and guilt, he ditched Hubert and Felix and went wandering in the city for a while, just to be amongst people who did not know him. It was comforting, somehow, to press himself into the busy streets and into a busy tavern and feel the throngs of people around him.

Unfortunately, being in a disagreeable mood, he did not manage to find company for the night, so when he did finally return to his rooms, all he had left was the wild hope that some maid he’d bedded previously would have foreseen his return and laid herself up in his bed, stark naked, to give him a warm, warm welcome. It would have been nice, he thought, to work off the constant thrum of anxiety he’d felt since his conflict with Dorothea, and smother himself in a nice pair of tits and forget the rest of the word. It was not meant to be; no one knew him enough to give that much of a shit. When he opened the door and crawled into his empty bed, he felt so lonely it hurt.

He rolled onto his back and started to unbutton his trousers.

“I can’t believe you let yourself get played like that. Didn’t all our time in Fhirdiad teach you anything?”

Sylvain raised his head in alarm and then dropped it again when he spied Felix sitting in an armchair.

“Go away,” Sylvain said. “I’m going to camp out by the door and ravish the first maid I can invite in, and you probably don’t want to be here for that.”

He was kidding, of course, but he should have known it was the wrong thing to say. Felix rose to his feet, stalked over to the bed, and stood over Sylvain with a cross look on his face.

“I've been stewing for hours on what she told us,” Felix said. His gaze flicked down to Sylvain's groin, eyes narrowed, and Sylvain buttoned himself up again. “And _that's_ what's going through your mind?”

Sylvain let out an exasperated huff.

“All you care about is making crude jokes and getting laid,” Felix continued. “But I suppose you like being a fool. You know that you could prostrate yourself before her as her slave and she still wouldn’t deign to sleep with you, but you’ll still try regardless.”

"The maid…?"

Felix gave him a pointed look. _Oh_.

“Why do you think I’m doing any of this to sleep with her?” Sylvain asked. He felt a little insulted, suddenly. “The maid thing was a joke, Felix. It has nothing to do with Edelgard. Who, by the way, would never waste her time on me.”

“You’re the same person now that you were when you were ten years old,” Felix said. “Except now you don’t even have conviction.”

“Yeah, well, two can play at that game,” Sylvain replied. “You’re still exactly as you werewhen _you_ were ten, and even though you pretend you’re above it all and that everyone is too stupid to understand... you’re still soft. You’re softer than me. You _want_ to go.”

Felix didn’t say anything at that. Sylvain opened his eyes and found Felix just glowering down at him, and then Sylvain scoffed.

“Go on,” he said. “Convince me otherwise. You know I’m right, you old nag.”

Felix grumbled at him and climbed into bed, crawling right overtop of him and laying down on his other side. Sylvain wondered why he didn’t just walk around the bed, but it really didn’t matter. For a moment, the two just laid in silence, and Sylvain felt the argument vanish. He’d never really had much of an argument in the first place, after all; fight-picking was Felix’s domain, and he had always been content to just let it wash over him, shoving back where he needed to. At least that much hadn’t changed since they were children.

Sylvain drifted a hand across the space between them and brushed his fingers against Felix’s fist. Felix ignored him for a moment, and then opened his hand. Sylvain slipped his hand into Felix’s, just for a brief moment, squeezing it tightly and then letting go before Felix could shake him off. He imagined it was something like an apology for calling him a nag. Felix scoffed, and then was ready to talk again.

"I don't think the king had political prisoners. Even at that age, we would have known."

"Well, it doesn't matter, right?" Sylvain said. There wasn't a subject in the world he wanted to talk about less. "He's dead and gone. All of Faerghus is gone. None of it exists anymore."

Felix sighed. And then:

“But I _did_ see Edelgard when we were in kids, in Fhirdiad,” Felix murmured. “She’s that girl.”

Sylvain turned his head to look at Felix. Felix gazed up at the top of the canopy.

“What girl?” Sylvain asked.

“There was a girl, when we were kids,” Felix said. He turned his head, amber eyes a little softer than before, his hair falling into them. “Do you remember her? She was living in the castle. When we got there for court that summer, Dimitri was talking with her, and he started to introduce her to us, but then that Lord Arundel showed up and marched her off. Dimitri called her his friend.”

Sylvain thought about it. He vaguely remembered a girl, but he couldn’t recall anything they might have said or done together. Upon further reflection, he had a hazy image of being ten or eleven years old and watching that old creepy guy grab that little girl by her forearm and march her away. He’d lifted her clear off her feet like she was made of feathers. She hadn’t resisted at all. Sylvain remembered feeling fear then, too. Maybe that was why he remembered it.

He supposed that at the time, he might have thought it was weird, but he couldn’t remember saying or doing anything about it. Why hadn’t he gone to his mother, or his father?

And then he remembered that she’d looked back at them, face unafraid but eyes round as saucers. Her face—

Sylvain sat bolt upright.

“Oh shit,” Sylvain said, stunned, and he turned around to look at Felix and grab his arm and shake him. Felix waved him off but still looked rather smug for having put it together. “Oh _shit!_ That little girl with the mousy hair — and he told us he gave a _dagger_ to a girl — oh, shit, you think that was _Edelgard?_”

“I think so,” Felix said. “She looked very different, but... I never forgot how odd she was. Not frightened, but she was constantly watching for something. She didn’t play with us. She just... watched.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain nodded. Try as he might, he couldn’t dredge up anything more, but he could picture her clearly. Sylvain frowned, shifting to sit properly, legs crossed. “So... why does she look like she does? With the colourless hair.”

How she had changed hadn’t seemed to occur to Felix. He sat up a bit, propping himself up on his elbows.

“Huh,” he said.

“And she doesn’t remember us?” Sylvain wondered.

It crossed his mind that maybe she did, but had never let onto it. He had some fleeting fantasy that she’d known the whole time, and maybe the little time she’d been in the sun with them was the most pleasant part of her time there, and years later at Garreg Mach, she’d artfully pulled all those strings to convince them to transfer. And then, like a hammer to his head, he remembered that Dimitri hated her, and the _profoundness_ of his hatred for her, and how Edelgard had snuffed that hatred out by putting an end to his life. She’d called him obsessed with her. All of that, and then to realize they’d known each other in childhood…

Sylvain hadn't felt such a desperate need to talk to Dimitri in years.

“I don’t think she realizes it was us,” Felix said, shaking his head. “I think she would have said that. But shouldn't she? Dimitri talked about her. Why did neither of them say _anything_ at Garreg Mach?”

“Weird,” Sylvain said. “The lot of us are pretty memorable, right? And there weren’t a lot of kids in Fhirdiad. Surely they reconnected when we got back to Garreg Mach, because how else would it have come up? How else would he have gotten the dagger back from her? Why didn't Dimitri tell us that was her?”

“He couldn't have forgotten,” Felix said. He paused, and something seemed to occur to him. “I think she knows a lot more than she’s letting on.”

“Well, it’s Edelgard, right?”

“Mm.”

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, Felix staring into space, Sylvain drumming his fingers on his knees while he tried to conjure up some memory of her, but he couldn’t tell what was a fragment of a memory and what was his overactive imagination. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. He looked at Felix and watched him for a moment, and Felix caught his gaze and met it only to shake his head. Nothing.

“You’ve got to be curious now,” Sylvain said.

“Yes,” Felix said. “But I still have no intention of going.”

“Why not?”

Felix fixed him with a pointed look, as if the answer should be obvious.

“I’ve made my peace with Faerghus,” he said. “I told you. I don’t want to go digging up old bones so that Edelgard can make hers.”

“You haven’t made peace with Faerghus at all,” Sylvain said. “Or Dimitri.”

That was the wrong thing to say, though it was paradoxically also the most correct thing he could have said. Felix sighed immediately, his brow furrowing. Sylvain swallowed his breath but decided not to walk it back.

“I’m not saying that to be a jerk,” Sylvain said. “I’m not over it, either.”

“Why do you always go back to Dimitri?” Felix snipped. “I’m fine. Get that through your thick skull.”

Ouch.

“Are you, though?” Sylvain asked. _Fine_, he decided. If Felix was going to withdraw, he would charge. “You know how I know you aren't? Because if you were, you wouldn't be living in Remire. But instead you were just never going to see me or any of our other friends ever again? For the rest of your life?”

Felix hesitated.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Thanks, Felix. Always love these chats.”

“Don’t take it so personally,” Felix replied, a touch defensive. “It happens all the time. We still live in a violent world. You never know when you’ll never see someone again.”

“How am I not supposed to take that personally? You just told me that you’d never see me, your best friend, ever again, just so you didn’t have to think about Dimitri,” Sylvain said. “That’s a little different from like, I don't know, Lorenz choking on a piece of filet mignon in his summer house out in wherever and never seeing him again. Not seeing me because you don’t want to _think_ about Dimitri is like...”

He trailed, his stomach flipping again. Felix said nothing.

“Like, maybe you would have been glad if I died with him,” Sylvain said, finally.

“You’re overthinking this,” Felix replied, curtly. “It has nothing to do with Dimitri, and I _am_ glad you’re not dead. I’m even glad you came to Remire. I’m just saying... would you have really come looking for me if Edelgard didn’t make you? Probably not, because you're the one who hasn't made peace with anything that happened.”

“Hey,” Sylvain said, a little hurt. “I… I would have looked for you eventually.”

“Maybe _eventually_,” Felix said, pointedly. “But you weren't about to do it now without being pushed.”

_Fair_, Sylvain supposed. He could say all he wanted that he would have eventually come around and hunted Felix down, but he knew he never would have been able to do it without Edelgard not only funding his travel but also directed him to the little mountain strip that Felix had wandered. What would he have done without her, if he wanted to find Felix? Maybe he really never would have found him. Maybe he wouldn’t have even tried. Maybe he would have just drank himself to death in some brothel and Felix would die of some wound in the woods all by his lonesome and no one would have ever reconnected.

Felix looked up at the canopy again. He made a sound like he was annoyed, or maybe like he was right about something esoteric, and Sylvain’s silence had confirmed it for him.

For some reason, that tweaked Sylvain’s temper.

“Do you think I don’t give a shit or something?” Sylvain asked.

“Not really,” Felix said. Sylvain couldn’t tell whether that was a _I don’t really think you care_ or a _that’s not really what I think. _It almost didn’t matter. Sylvain knew when Felix was being deliberately obtuse, _endlessly_ having to disagree with everyone, even his best friends—

“If I didn’t care about you, I would have told her no. She couldn’t _make_ me find you, and you never told me where you were going anyway, so I don’t know what you want from me_,” _Sylvain said. “Why’d you come, then? You knew it was about Dimitri the whole time, why you’d even come, if not because of me?”

Felix shook his head.

“You _know_ I came here for you,” he said. “But if you're just going to take out_ your_ problems on me, I’m going to dinner.”

Felix moved to leave. Sylvain lunged, grabbing Felix by the wrist, and Felix fought him off. For a moment they tussled, but Sylvain had the advantage of momentum, and he pinned Felix into the bed, a knee on his belly and both hands pressing Felix’s wrists over his head. Felix braced himself, feet finding purchase against the covers to push up and roll, but Sylvain leant his weight in. He felt Felix tense, and he made sure to sit back enough to not get head-butted. Both stayed still a moment, at some sort of an impasse.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Sylvain asked, and though he’d intended to demand it, it came out as little more than a mutter. The intensity in Felix’s eyes made Sylvain’s face feel hot. “I actually give a shit about you, Felix...”

Felix didn’t reply. He just waited, chest rising and falling deeply, and he raised his chin as if challenging Sylvain to hit him. Sylvain didn’t want to hit him. Instead he just let go, sitting back on his heels, trying to decide whether to apologize. Was there a point? Felix never fucking apologized in return, anyway.

While he was busy thinking, Felix sat up, sighed, and leaned in. At first, Sylvain thought he might have to defend himself from getting slammed around in return, but Felix just lingered, face close to his. Sylvain looked at his lips. They were a bit wind-chapped. Their eyes met.

Then Felix kissed him.

It was so sudden that Sylvain had to reach back with a hand to brace himself, but it was a _sweet_ kiss, slow and calm. Sylvain couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kissed like that, and Felix cupped his face with both hands and pressed into his space and then stopped abruptly. For a second Sylvain just looked at him, something like _what the fuck, man?_ He exhaled and Felix inhaled, and then Sylvain dug his free hand into the front of Felix’s shirt, pulled him back in, and kissed him again, but _harder_. It stretched on and on, Felix warm against him, _wanting_ him.

When Felix finally pulled back, his cheeks flushed and his eyes darting away, he dropped his hands from Sylvain’s face and pried Sylvain’s hand out of his shirt. Sylvain let him go.

“Uh,” Sylvain said. “You okay?”

He opened his arms. _C’mere. Come back._

“Yeah,” Felix said, looking away. “Never mind. Let’s go get dinner.”

Felix got to his feet. Sylvain watched him straighten up his clothes and make for the door. For a moment, Sylvain just sat there, sitting somewhere between disappointment and the heady rush of human connection. _Dinner?_

“Felix,” Sylvain called. “You can’t just... hey...”

He trailed. Felix paused at the doorway. For a second they just looked at each other, Felix remarkably calm all things considered, and Sylvain feeling like he would explode. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explode, but he imagined no matter the result, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Dread floated like oil on the great flood of joy welling up within him.

“Are you coming?” Felix asked.

Sylvain cursed under his breath and got up.

“Yeah,” he said. “Coming.”

Sylvain found himself staring at the back of Felix’s head as they stood in the dining hall line. He held a plate between his hands, and it was so warm from being in the warming oven that his fingertips hurt for holding it, but in the queue he didn’t really have a place to put it down, so he just stood there, fingers scalding on the hot ceramic. Whatever. What was a little bit of physical discomfort on top of the rest?

He watched the woman behind the serving counter dish out a heaping ladle of beef stew over a pile of rice. He watched Felix take the plate back, nod a thanks to the woman, and then walk away to find them a seat at the long banquet tables. Sylvain felt tempted to throw his plate at Felix’s retreating back. _Coward_! He bellowed internally. _You yellow-bellied coward, kissing me and going to dinner! You stupid, emotionally constipated, pain-in-the-ass moron!_

The idea of spending dinner sitting across from Felix drove him a little mad. He watched the serving lady dish up dinner for him, too, stewing in his own mild frustration, and before she handed him back his too-hot plate, she looked him in the eye and smiled.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re that Gautier fellow.”

“Guilty,” he said. “Whatever you’ve heard, the rumours are true.”

She smiled and looked at him through her eyelashes.

“Could you verify them?”

Sylvain took his plate back and smiled, too, perhaps a touch less easily than he ever had before. Any other day, he would have taken the easy opening without even thinking, but he knew he would be mopping up whatever was going on with Felix as soon as possible, and he knew Felix wouldn’t be okay with a double-booking. _Fuck_!

Sylvain just winked, turned and walked away before he did something stupid. He scanned the tables for the top of Felix’s head and found Edelgard and Hubert first, and then Felix somewhere else. He sighed, marching over to Felix and nudging him with his elbow.

“Get up, we’re eating with Edelgard,” he said, and then he marched back over to her. Hubert caught sight of him before he could get close, and Sylvain watched Hubert look between him, Felix and the space Felix had chosen. Here it came.

“Did you forget about the invitation?” Hubert intoned upon approach.

“Felix absolutely did,” Sylvain said, setting down his plate and then sitting down. He took one look at Edelgard and felt sure she was the little girl in his vague memory of meeting her. That was a whole other thing to think about, though. He decided against asking, too. Maybe that wasn’t worth dredging up over dinner.

Felix joined them wordlessly and began eating without as much as a hello, at least until Hubert cleared his throat. Felix then raised his head just long enough to give them both a nod and a muttered, “Hubert, Edelgard.”

Sylvain rolled his eyes.

“Hey, Edelgard,” Sylvain said, “I was hoping to see the Professor; I haven’t been able to say hello yet. She coming down to dinner?”

“Not tonight, I’m afraid,” Edelgard said. “She’s been under the weather these past few weeks; her constitution isn’t always what it used to be, and the palace can be very overwhelming. But I’ll see if she feels up to some company, and perhaps you can come upstairs for a little bit.”

“Oh,” Sylvain said. “Well, I won’t say no to that. I’m sure Felix would like to see her, too.”

Felix did perk up a little at that. He nodded.

“I’ll go speak with her,” Hubert said, and he got up from the table. Edelgard glanced at him as he arose, and he just nodded and walked away. Sylvain had no idea what that sort of glance was supposed to convey; sometimes they seemed too lofty for human communication. Sylvain looked at his untouched plate.

“What does Hubert even eat?” Sylvain asked. He thought that maybe if you denied yourself the pleasures of eating and play, you just developed psychic powers. Sylvain thought that sounded as likely as anything.

“Black coffee, mostly,” Edelgard responded, amused.

Sylvain chuckled to himself, getting an odd look in return. He considered his theory confirmed.

“Felix,” Edelgard said. “Do you have any plans for while you’re in the capitol?”

“None,” he replied. Conversation over.

Edelgard was not to be deterred. She maintained that easy, quiet smile, and said: “If you would like any suggestions, there is a wonderful opera that plays a few times a week, and some of the parks are very pretty this time of year.”

Felix shook his head.

“Or perhaps I could arrange a visit to the armoury,” she said. “We have quite the collection of antique weaponry, and we will be making a museum for them in the coming months. You could see it all before it is made available to the public.”

Sylvain could tell that Felix’s interest was piqued, as he looked up from his meal and got that shine in his eye, the same he’d gotten as a boy whenever he was allowed to use a new combat technique. Still, he shook his head, his jaw squared.

“We aren’t at Garreg Mach, Edelgard,” Felix said, voice clipped. “You don’t have to put together an extra-curricular schedule for me. I will give your proposition the same amount of consideration regardless.”

Edelgard sighed and leant against the edge of the table.

“I wasn’t offering to bribe you,” she said, sounding a little disappointed. “I sincerely just thought you might enjoy it.”

“I live in the woods,” Felix said. “I can see trees anywhere.”

“Duly noted,” Edelgard replied. “What about the eight hundred year old swords?”

Felix pushed his plate away from him, and it made a low rumble as the bottom scraped against the wooden tabletop. Sylvain knew what was coming next, and he could only brace himself and hope that it didn’t come out too rude. He looked at Edelgard, who frowned.

“Why don't you remember meeting us in Fhirdiad?” Felix demanded.

There it was. For a moment, Edelgard said nothing, perhaps trying to puzzle out what Felix was even talking about. Perhaps, Sylvain considered, she was trying to come up with an answer.

“I suppose that I must have,” said Edelgard, finally. “I don’t remember much from that time.”

Felix gave a hum of acknowledgement, stood up, and then walked away. Sylvain sighed, and for a moment both he and Edelgard watched Felix’s retreating back. Sylvain felt Edelgard’s gaze move towards him well before he gave up on watching Felix, and all he could do was shake his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “He’s... I don’t know what's going on with him.”

“There’s no need to apologize on his behalf,” Edelgard said, but she sounded plenty bothered.

Sylvain shook his head again. He slid his own plate away.

“I know, but I better go after him.” He reached across the table and put his hand on Edelgard’s briefly, her white glove soft under his bare fingers. “Sorry — I'll talk to you later?”

Edelgard nodded.

“Of course,” she said.

And then he strode off, leaving Edelgard alone with four full plates.

Felix hadn’t gotten too far ahead, but in the busy palace, catching up felt like chasing fish upstream. Felix was quicker, slipping between clusters of people, leaving Sylvain to awkwardly shoulder his way through similar gaps to follow. He shouted after him, politely as he could without making a scene, but Felix made no effort to stop.

Why did he always have to be such a brat?

Sylvain managed to close distance on the stairs, taking them three at a time, though his calves burned from the awkward stride length by time he was halfway up. At the top he was within arm’s length, and he reached for Felix, but Felix jerked his arm out of the way. Sylvain sighed, jogged to close the gap entirely, and then grabbed Felix by both shoulders.

“Felix! Stop!”

Felix jerked to a stop, and Sylvain pivoted around him.

“Hey,” he said, reaching to cup Felix’s face. “Hey. Calm down.”

Felix lingered between his hands. Sylvain stroked his cheek a moment with his thumb, searching his face, and then decided to kiss him. Felix tensed up between his hands, but he relented just as fast, and when they broke off, Felix exhaled sharply and gripped his wrists.

Sylvain thought, for a moment, that Felix looked _resigned_. Sylvain wanted to kiss him more, but when Sylvain leaned in again, Felix turned his head away.

“Don't treat me like one of your girlfriends.”

"I won't," Sylvain promised. He took Felix by the sleeve and marched him into his room. Felix followed, and an odd mixture of dread and excitement pooled in Sylvain’s gut; he knew what was coming. Felix closed the door behind them and Sylvain pulled him across the room the moment his hand slipped from the handle. He watched Felix swallow his breath, and then Felix reached for the hem of his shirt and lifted it, and Sylvain raised his arms so they could pull it off entirely. Felix dropped it aside.

Felix set upon his neck, kissing here, nipping there, all with no rhyme or reason. Sylvain exhaled, hands on Felix’s hips to steady him. He didn’t know how much Felix wanted to be touched in return, but knowing Felix, it wasn’t much. He sure liked that mouth on him, though. His fingers made indents in Felix’s skin, and he tucked his chin down to try to coax Felix back up again to his mouth, but Felix ignored him.

“Felix,” Sylvain said, as Felix tore down his neck.

But Felix ignored him still, breaking away not to reply, but to start fumbling with the buttons on Sylvain’s trousers. Sylvain let him, and even dipped a hand in to help with the placket, only to have Felix move right on to working his pants off his hips. He seemed rushed, _too_ rushed. Sylvain’s heart hammered, and before Felix could pull his cock from his briefs, Sylvain reached in to intervene or _something_, he didn’t know what, but then he withdrew his hand just as fast. Felix paused, even if only for that one hesitation, and looked up, frowning.

Sylvain held his gaze for a moment. He wasn’t sure. It felt right, but...

It was a little different, with Felix.

“Are we doing this?” Felix asked. “Isn't this what you want?”

Felix’s hand was already in the front of his pants, his palm warm, his fingers tight. Sylvain felt his breath quicken, and he told himself to stop being such a moron about it. He shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Sylvain nodded furiously.

“Yeah,” Sylvain said. “Yeah. Blow me.”

Felix pushed him. Not hard enough to knock him over, but certainly hard enough to force him to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Then _relax_,” Felix ordered him. 

Felix dropped to his knees and Sylvain exhaled sharply when Felix took out his hard cock. A smile tugged on Sylvain’s lips when Felix spit into his own palm and began to stroke him, completely ungentle, completely relentless. He pressed a kiss to the juncture of Sylvain’s thigh, and then the base of his cock, and then up its length. He did this like it was a warm-up. Sylvain's toes curled in his boots.

“Okay,” Sylvain said, gasping a little. His hand went to the back of Felix’s head, fingers curling around Felix's hairtie. “Felix…”

_Fuck_.

From his place laying on the bed, Sylvain watched Felix bend over the wash basin.

Rivulets of water streamed down Felix’s arms, gathering at his elbows and dripping off. Felix scrubbed his face and rinsed out his mouth with such prolonged, thorough intensity that it seemed he would scrub his skin right off. It was vaguely insulting, in a way, to watch someone act like he’d sullied them. But, he supposed, he couldn’t judge — he knew where he’d been, after all. And he probably should have, well... _warned_ him.

“Want to come to bed...?” Sylvain asked, when the silence felt unbearable and he didn’t feel like his chest was about to burst. He sat up in bed then, his trousers properly kicked off. He thought he should dress, but he sort of hoped Felix would want more.

Not likely. Felix seemed ready to leave. Sylvain wasn’t sure if it was cold feet or if it was simple regret, but he wasn’t surprised either way.

He wasn’t sure which was sadder: that he was used to it, or that even Felix pulled it on him.

Felix finished up, crossed the room and poured himself a glass of wine, which he drank slowly and methodically. Sylvain gave him a pointed look, gesturing at the wine carafe, and Felix ignored that, too. He scarcely even made eye contact.

“Felix,” Sylvain said, annoyed.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Felix said. And then, in that tense and drawn out tone: “Just be happy that for one night you don’t have to prowl around looking desperate, and then make excuses for yourself. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

Sylvain rolled his eyes. _Thanks, Felix._

“Because that is _such_ a courtesy to me,” he said. “Let’s not forget who started this.”

Felix actually looked at him. His amber eyes were intense, even without the scowl to go with it.

“_I_ started this?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said, and he tried to be patient. “But this is what? The third time you’ve pulled this on me in the past ten years?”

“You know what? It doesn’t matter,” Felix said. (He said that every time.) “I don't want to go in circles with you. You can just say you wanted your cock sucked and stop pretending it means anything to you.”

Sylvain grit his teeth a moment. _Calm. Be calm._

“You know,” Sylvain said. “I’m good on that front. Plenty of people willing to suck me off. But I was thinking, maybe I could actually make you feel good too. You know, nix this whole thing where you jump me, and then insult _me_ for wanting it?”

Felix rolled his eyes, and then he marched across the room to retrieve his baldric from the bottom of the bed. Sylvain scrambled down to the foot of the bed and grabbed his arm. Felix tried to pull away but Sylvain locked his grip and tugged him back.

“Okay! Don’t go!” Sylvain relented. “Fuck! You win, conversation over! Just... sit down. Lay with me. Stay.”

Felix’s face was clear with distrust, but he deflated just as quickly. Sylvain let him go and Felix set the baldric and his swords back down. He crawled back into bed, stretching out on his side, facing the wall. Despite being fully clothed, he pulled the covers up around him, struggling where Sylvain was sitting on them, but Sylvain didn’t move.

“I know what you’re thinking, so I want to make it perfectly clear that this is between you and I; it has nothing to do with him,” Felix said, finally. “I'm here because of you. Goodnight.”

“Okay,” Sylvain said with obvious disbelief. Sure. That made sense, perfect sense. Bring up a person who had nothing to do with it for no reason, okay. Sylvain felt tempted to send him away after all, but Felix was already in bed ignoring him, so what was the point? He’d already given in twice. He muttered: “‘Night.”

Sylvain got up to wash himself up for the night, pulled on some loose pants for sleeping, and he snuffed out the lamps before returning to bed. He crawled under the covers, making no effort to not be annoying or jostle Felix in the process, but Felix didn’t move at all. Sylvain wondered why Felix stayed if he was just going to ignore him, but then again, that was the great mystery of Felix. That man would tear you down but then linger at your side, as loyal as could be. You had to screw things up on Dimitri levels to drive him away.

Sylvain thought he knew Felix in his bones, but sometimes…

Sylvain sighed.

“You're are such a pain in the ass, honestly.”

Felix said nothing. Sylvain watched him for a moment. Felix was still stretched out on his side, on the cusp of rolling onto his belly, and after a moment Sylvain realized he was either fast asleep or determined to pretend he was, and then he could only quietly chuckle to himself, exhausted, exasperated. He put both hands to his face and dragged them down, groaning like he could tear his own flesh off. Of course.

“I’m such an idiot,” Sylvain muttered to himself.

And it wasn’t really that he minded when Felix pulled this on him. Sylvain figured he knew something of being lonely, and he knew what it was like to seek out someone warm and willing for the sake of quelling it. How often did he get into some cozy conversation with someone who seemed even remotely interested in him and then hop right into bed with them? He’d probably done the same to hundreds of women and more than a couple men over the years. He couldn’t really begrudge Felix for something he did on the regular.

The problem here was that Sylvain was a little too close to home. When he bedded some girl to forget another, that girl never knew she was a stand-in. Sylvain was sure he’d been on the receiving end of it, too, at one point or another, but he always pushed through those moments because no one liked _knowing_ they were a stand-in. Worse, Sylvain didn’t like knowing who he was a stand-in _for_.

And perhaps worst of all, Sylvain felt the slightest bit of resentment that Felix was likely never going to want him as anything but a stand-in. It was a resentment he could swallow — why wouldn’t he comfort his friend however he could? — but a resentment just the same. Sylvain figured no one would ever want him. He’d been sleeping around for the better part two decades and still hadn’t found someone who did.

For a cumulative ten minutes of his life, Sylvain had allowed himself to consider a future where he and Felix were together. Not just as childhood friends, not just comrades in arms, but together-together. They would sleep in the same bed every night, joke over meals, try to upstage each other around the holidays, and complain about growing old together, all with a healthy helping of lovemaking throughout it all. Why not? Sylvain didn't think it impossible. They'd brushed up against it before, if only in those _ha-ha-ha-wouldn't-it-be-funny-if-we-stuck together-forever _sort of ways.

Since when did anyone ever promise to die together if they didn't _really_ mean it, you know?

Those ten minutes were also some of the most painful of Sylvain's life, as the moment they abated, he'd be left for hours pondering something that could never really be. What they hadn't promised each other, Sylvain recalled, was to _live_ together, and for that Sylvain knew in his heart that someday he was going to settle down with some woman on a plot of land somewhere, and he'd live out the rest of his life as a disciplined married man. The thought didn't exactly thrill him –– it was hard to be thrilled about a future with a person he hadn’t even met yet –– but he felt reasonably confident that it would be with a woman.

The truth was even if he often resented women, no man in his life had ever been so tender to him. Felix was a fickle, cat-like creature in the form of a man, and he could barely share himself with his loved ones without showing his claws, and Sylvain knew he could never feel truly comforted like that. At the end of the day, he would almost always pick some girl lavishing him with attention and pretending to be interested in whatever inane thing he wanted to talk about. He didn’t want to be with someone who could not apologize to him, or spoke to him with disdain, or felt the need to compete with him. He wanted to feel like he could talk about his feelings without getting teased. He also did not want to be that kind of man himself, not with a beloved, and to his experience, women simply did not tolerate that sort of behaviour for long. Men did. Men who were born tender and soft often ended up that way in the end, too, because men built and destroyed entire friendships on those rickety pillars. Entire brotherhoods. Entire nations.

He couldn’t think about it too long. It made him feel empty, and with his house name ruined and the crests abolished, he didn’t have anything else to blame but himself.

Sylvain rolled over in bed, carefully as he could as to not disturb Felix. For a moment he laid there, wading through anxious thoughts that threatened to swallow him whole, and when Felix didn’t stir at all, he wrapped himself against Felix’s back. Felix shifted gently in his sleep, but he didn’t wake, and so Sylvain let his forehead rest against the back of Felix’s neck. That tiny strip of flesh between the fine hairs at the base of Felix's hairline and the top of his shirt collar was warm.

He closed his eyes, knowing when morning came, Felix would have slunk away from him. Not for the last time, of course, but he’d be gone just the same.

_Ah, well, _he thought. There was no sense in being sad about it. Faerghus was a cold, cruel place, and to Sylvain’s experience, it had produced cold, cruel men who didn't have the luxury of tenderness.

This was as good as he felt he’d ever get.


	15. Naïve Fantasies

On most free days, Sylvain and Felix played cards over lunch. Sometimes Ingrid would join them as well, but on that particular day, she had failed to turn up. Catching up on studying, Sylvain thought, or perhaps too engrossed in some tale of knighthood to have realized the hour. He didn’t give it much thought; sometimes it was nice for it to be just him and Felix, as they could curse more, and rib each other in the way girls never understood. Men being _men_.

They only had a few games they could play. Spit was banned by the nuns after one too many incidents where drinks or entire plates got overturned, and anything with betting was banned on account of gambling being inappropriate to their religious educations and sinful. Costly Colours was too complicated to bother with most of the time. So, week after week, they tended towards Old Maid, which they played with rules of punishment: the winner got to scrape the entire deck across the loser's knuckles, which could draw blood if you did it properly.

“I swear,” Sylvain said, having lost a round and ready to draw the card that determined the number of times he would be punished. "If it's Jack…"

“Draw, coward,” Felix replied.

Sylvain peeled the top card back, bracing himself for bad news.

“I have to talk to you both,” Ingrid said, appearing at their table.

_Spared!_

Both looked at her. She had a chair under her arm, and she stood behind Sylvain with intent to _make_ him move if he didn’t make space for her. He did, but he tried to do it without standing up, so the legs of his own chair just screeched against the floor, prompting everyone in the dining hall to wince as one and look to the idiot. Oops. Ingrid took the space anyway, sitting down and tucking herself in close.

“I’m joining the Black Eagles,” she said. “I asked Professor Byleth two days ago and she said approved it today.”

“Oh,” Sylvain said, intrigued. He put down his cards, and Felix sighed because he wouldn't get to scrape Sylvain's knuckles at all with Ingrid around. Sylvain asked: “What prompted this? A couple weeks ago you were saying otherwise.”

The three of them all knew what she had said, but Ingrid just shook her head.

“Well, for one,” she said, “Professor Byleth is willing to let me take master flying classes. Professor Hanneman wanted me to get certification in an advanced class, but the Professor is willing to let me stay where I am until I’m eligible for the certification exam for falcon knight.”

“Right,” Sylvain said. “That’s why Felix changed over, too. For his education.”

Felix rolled his eyes.

“I do actually want to improve in reason,” he said.

“Is that why I never see you at choir practice?” Sylvain asked him. He leant his cheek on his hand and gazed across the table at Felix with a teasing smile that barely flickered when Felix kicked him in the shins. “And why you only took certifications for classes that aren’t allowed to use magic?”

“It’ll make sense eventually,” he said.

“Sure,” Sylvain said. He turned his eyes on Ingrid next, and he batted his eyelashes at her. “Do you both remember when you gave me shit for leaving the Blue Lions? Remember that? Do you? Because I sure do.”

“Anyway,” Ingrid said, elbowing Sylvain hard. “I’ll be starting classes with you both on Monday.”

Felix didn’t look so sure, but Sylvain felt a lightness overtake him as the thought settled in. The three of them would be together again. It wasn’t quite the quartet of his childhood, but it was more than he’d expected for some time. It even made him feel hopeful, in a largely unfounded sort of way. Dimitri was still Dimitri, but they had all the time in the world to get to the bottom of that.

“You’re going to like class with us,” Sylvain said, settling into a pleased mood as comfortably as the monastery cats settled into naps in the sun. “The Professor just gets it, and you'll get the hang of her blank face pretty fast. We spend almost no time in lecture, it’s all out and about in the training ring, and we do group studies for historical military texts... she doesn’t talk much but it all falls into place, you know?”

“Everything I’ve heard about her teaching methods has sounded pretty unusual,” Ingrid said, “I’m excited to see more of it in action. Is it true that the only time she speaks is on the battlefield?”

“Kind of,” Sylvain said. “She’ll talk with the class sometimes but it’s usually just sentence or two, and it’s so quiet it’s kind of spooky. Completely different from on the battlefield. It’s like she reserves all her energy for the moment we get out there. It’s amazing to watch.”

Ingrid nodded enthusiastically. Felix did not — in fact, his stony expression seemed that much more concerned.

“And what about the Boar Prince?” he asked.

For a moment, the three of them were quiet, the roar of the dining hall around them feeling louder than ever. Sylvain glanced sidelong at Ingrid, who pursed her lips for a moment. Dimitri had taken to deep spells of alternating sullenness and frustration when Felix and then Annette had transferred. Annette hadn't even transferred for anything to do with him. Sylvain could only imagine how he might feel about yet another childhood friend changing classes.

“I spoke to Dimitri beforehand,” Ingrid said. “I thought it was a better alternative than him finding out later. I was surprised, though –– he was angry, but he didn’t yell at me at all.”

She had bigger balls than either of them, Sylvain decided. If he’d spoken to Dimitri first, he surely wouldn’t have gone through with it, and Felix probably wouldn’t have fared much better. He couldn’t imagine having that conversation, or how it would have gone, but he supposed it was because he wouldn’t have a good enough reason. He still didn’t have a good enough reason, at least not one he could give Dimitri.

“What did you say to him?” Felix asked, having evidently pondered the same thing. “It’s late in the year to transfer. We’ve only got two months left before final exams. I don’t believe he bought some nonsense about being a falcon knight.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Ingrid said. “That part’s true. But I didn’t lie to him either; I told him that he was making me nervous, and that changing classes meant we both had a little more space.”

Sylvain hummed his surprise.

“Bet that went over well.”

“He knows something is wrong, he just doesn’t... I don’t know.” Despite everything, concern flooded her voice; she folded her hands in her lap and dropped her gaze to the abandoned card game. “Any time I talk to him, he’s concerned about me, about my training. It’s impossible to get him to open up about himself. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t snap as much lately, but I don’t know. Something seems off, still.”

“If he’s content the way he is, then there’s no point,” Felix said. “He’s just hiding it better. I haven’t spoken to him in weeks and I’ve never felt more at ease.”

Sylvain hated when he said that. Though he didn’t exactly get the impression that Dimitri was any closer to some sort of revelation, Sylvain still tried. They had weekly sparring sessions, and they still ate dinner together often, and if they passed each other in the halls, they would still stop to chat where they could. Not every conversation was sunshine and roses, but being in another class had at least taken a great deal of pressure off, and Sylvain was happy to keep Dimitri close. (Maybe not _next door_ close, but certainly not in his classes.)

They were friends, after all. This was all just a rough patch.

“So what? Ingrid and I stop talking to him? I’m sure that’ll be inspiring. _Hey Dimitri — you can’t have friends until you’re ready to confront your crippling wounds, which you should probably do before you ascend to the throne on your eighteenth birthday!_ Jeez,” Sylvain replied. “If we ignore him, think of how much worse he’ll feel when we all graduate and go back to Fhirdiad in four months.”

“I have thought about it,” Felix replied. “I don’t plan to be there for it.”

“Uh, where do you plan to be?” Sylvain asked.

Felix looked a little bit like he hadn’t planned on sharing, but he shook his head.

“I was thinking I’d abdicate my title,” Felix said. He said it like it was nothing, a decision akin to deciding whether he’d dress himself in a white shirt or a blue one that morning.

Sylvain’s mind blanked. For an agonizing moment, he had to remind himself of what that even meant. He’d heard of hundreds of disinheritances in his life, but never once an abdication. He hadn’t known it was possible to do by choice, especially without being under pressure to do it.

“So you’re just... not going to succeed your father?”

“I’m not,” Felix said. “Why are you both looking at me like it isn’t something you want to do, too?”

“My family relies on me too much,” Ingrid said, sounding a little perturbed. “It would be selfish for me to make that choice. Felix, I didn’t realize you were considering it, let alone already decided to do it.”

Sylvain didn’t offer his own thoughts, as they felt too cowardly to admit to. As much as he abhorred his gilded prison, he didn’t exactly have any alternatives; his family was the palatial roof over his head, the fine wools and furs on his back, and an assurance that the only suffering he’d ever experience in his life was getting married to a woman who didn’t give a shit about him, as well as knowing he’d passed his existential burdens onto whatever kids he fathered. He’d had years to prepare himself for that, and it all sounded better than starting over on his own.

Still, the two of them looked at him as if he should be contributing, so he just nudged Felix under the table and asked: “What about your family? Won’t it make it difficult for everyone?

Felix shrugged.

“It’s not really my concern.” For a moment they were quiet, and then Felix added: “I don’t plan to be at Dimitri’s coronation. I don’t plan to be in Fhirdiad at all, or even in Faerghus. I don’t want to see how bad it’s going to get under his rule.”

Sylvain knew that if Felix wasn’t in Faerghus, he likely wouldn’t be seeing him much. Miklan’s disinheritance had been the culmination of a long, quiet war within the Gautier family, but it hadn’t meant exile until their father had lost his last reason to keep Miklan around. If Felix wanted no part in Dimitri’s rule, then it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to think all of Faerghus’ noble families would turn against him. It seemed overly drastic, too; Sylvain thought Dimitri would be a mediocre but unobjectionable ruler, the kind that ended up an obscure trivia question for Faerghus’ history books, and that wouldn’t be enough to upset the old guard. Felix would just be dead to them all for having too-lofty standards. That didn’t seem worthwhile when standards were very easy to lower.

Sylvain contemplated a life without Felix and found himself upset.

“That seems a little melodramatic,” Ingrid said. Sylvain felt a drop of relief; he didn’t put much stock in pleading, but if Ingrid could at least make a case for it, maybe Felix would take her seriously. “He’s probably going to take a few years to figure out how it works, and he’s going to make bad choices here or there, but he’ll get the hang of it. He’s been preparing his entire life for this, after all.”

Felix shook his head. Sylvain looked at Ingrid expectantly, and she gave him a pointed look. _Fine_.

“Think about it, Felix,” Sylvain said. “It’s not like Dimitri is warmongering or anything. He has some patsy opinions about preventing war and suffering and discord, but those aren’t things he can do harm with. And like Ingrid said, he’s been preparing for this his entire life. He’ll probably be a cow to deal with sometimes, but he’s going to have advisors, people much older than us and with much more experience. They’ll shepherd him until he’s ready. And we’ll be there.”

"I don't think you give him enough credit," Felix said. "All this talk about how we can help him, how we can fix him, like he's some helpless piglet — he knows what he's doing. He just doesn't want to take responsibility for it."

"He's been through a lot," Ingrid argued.

"So?" Felix said. "So has everyone else. The difference is we grieved and we moved on. We can't help him if he isn't interested in being anything but miserable."

"He's our friend," Sylvain said.

But Felix wasn't interested in entertaining the subject anymore. He turned his attention back to his neglected lunch, stabbing his fork into his potatoes au gratin in much the same way he might have finished off an enemy on the battlefield. Finally, he lifted his eyes again just to add:

“Don't mind me. Since you both have all these naive fantasies about being able to save someone who doesn't want your help, you might as well bond over them.”

Sylvain and Ingrid exchanged exasperated looks. Ingrid folded her arms and leant against the table, but she didn’t say anything else. It wasn’t surprising — after all, Sylvain knew Felix gave up quickly when he encountered people set in their ways — but he still didn’t like to be snipped at. Felix kept picking at his food, pretending they were having some grand conversation in lieu of the silence, but then he looked up at someone standing behind Sylvain, and he gestured for Sylvain to look. Sylvain turned.

A girl from their house stood there, smiling expectantly. Sylvain recognized her and smiled too; he’d bent her over a bench in the sauna a couple weeks prior, and he’d taken her silence afterwards to be an indicator that she was pretty forgiving of him not calling on her again afterwards. He thought maybe she’d be up to another tryst, so he turned completely in his chair so he could give her his full attention.

“Is that a new brooch, Grace?” he asked, reaching up and running a finger around it; the side of his hand brushed her breast in the process, but Grace didn't seem to mind. (He heard Ingrid sigh.) “It’s real pretty.”

“Thanks,” Grace said. “Lorenz gave it to me.”

He lost interest. Sylvain could have even faked a gagging noise, but he resisted the urge in favour of nodding and smiling.

“What brings you to me, then?”

“I have a message for you,” she said, and she held out a piece of parchment. Sylvain plucked it from her grasp with a much tighter smile, and he swivelled back to face the table with a little hand-wave goodbye.

“Thank you,” he said over his shoulder, and Grace scoffed and breezed off without another word.

“You are so awful,” Ingrid said. She reached across the table and nudged Felix. “Please tell me the girls in my new class aren’t going to be looking to me to control him.”

“They will,” Felix said.

Ingrid sighed.

Sylvain ignored them both and flipped open the piece of parchment. It was unsigned, but he knew it was from Hubert from the handwriting alone. He flipped it closed again, tossing it on the table. His friends gave him a questioning look.

“Edelgard cancelled on me,” he said.

Ingrid shrugged, and Felix just resumed picking at his dinner; he decided not to elaborate, since they didn’t care and he didn’t want to invite commentary on him getting rejected by Edelgard. Sylvain stewed on it alone.

If Edelgard had just rescheduled a board game session, Sylvain might not have given it a second thought. Scheduling conflicts were inevitable, but she’d never outright cancelled on him before. For someone as punctual and organized as Edelgard, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Still, he gave it a pass. One missed game wasn’t the end of the world, and much as he enjoyed them, he knew Edelgard didn’t owe them to him. An evening off on their usual night was enjoyable in its own way, too.

Then Edelgard started missing classes that month. And then before long, she’d rescheduled three weeks in a row, and their usual night vanished in favour of something more erratic: one mid-week, one on a weekend, two mid-week to make up for a missed week entirely. She missed almost half of their classes that month. Most people seemed to brush it off as inevitable; plenty of noble students left for a week or two here or there to attend to family matters, and it seemed apropos that the Imperial Princess would have more responsibilities than most.

But something about it nagged at Sylvain. He saw it in her face when they did play, and in how she seemed to double-down on him about how necessary it was for him to focus on his studies. She had always been inordinately focused on the futures of those around her, but he got the impression more was on her mind than just their impending graduation.

What that was, he wasn’t sure. He imagined she was dealing with a marriage proposal or something; Ingrid was always fielding those, and she didn’t even come from worthwhile land. But on the other hand, it seemed awful petty for someone like Edelgard.

No, it was something else.

“You’re slipping,” Edelgard told him, as she captured two pieces. She liked to play chess like his father and Miklan did: they preferred quick, decisive action. Sylvain preferred the long game, and it usually served him well. It never seemed to get him very far ahead with Edelgard, though.

“Guilty,” he said. He took the pieces off the board, worried his tongue against the inside of his lips, and decided to take a gamble. “So what’s going on with Enbarr?”

“Plenty,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re going again tomorrow, aren’t you?”

Edelgard frowned.

“What makes you think that?”

Answering questions with more questions seemed to be the most telling play in the book of misdirections, but Sylvain wasn’t about to point that out to her.

“Just a solid guess,” he said. He paused, and then fixed her with a knowing look. “Well, actually, I was in the Prof’s office the other day and I saw her class plan. Our classes are just going to be lectures for a few days early next week. She’s never been one to lecture, so that means Seteth is covering, right? And I figured if she’s missing classes... it must be important.”

Edelgard took another one of his pieces, but then hesitated to keep moving; she’d spied one of his pieces laying in wait, but with the piece already lifted, she had to move. She put it down.

"What does that have to do with Enbarr?"

Sylvain swooped in and captured that piece in turn.

“If you’re fast it’s a couple days to Enbarr, a couple days back — you usually go over weekends, but it also minimizes class disruption. So I figured, you’re going to Enbarr, and she’s going with you.”

He glanced at her. She did not smile, not even a hint of it. Sylvain shrugged and couldn’t help but grin.

“Am I right?” he asked. He slid her piece to her and she caught it before it skidded off the table’s edge. She placed it back in her pretty oiled box. “No? Maybe it was a stretch.”

She made an amused sound, something between a laugh and a sigh.

“You’re much less careless than you used to be,” she said. “But just as carefree! I wonder what it’s like to be so unburdened.”

That bothered him a little. He did not think of himself as unburdened; perhaps his burdens were a little more ridiculous than most, as his greatest objections were things that every nobleman and noblewoman on the continent took as a given, but they troubled him just the same.

Perhaps having noticed his smile fade, Edelgard added: “But it was a very astute observation, Sylvain. The Professor and I will be traveling to Enbarr this weekend. I’d like to introduce her to my father. He has been sickly for some time and I thought he should meet the woman who has influenced me so deeply.”

“Ah,” Sylvain said. That piqued his interest, and if she thought he was easy, then he supposed she was correct — being right about her plans _did_ take the sting out of her offhand comment. His smile returned. “Wow. That’s pretty serious! Wedding bells in the future, perhaps?”

“Sylvain,” she said, in perhaps the most _gently_ scolding tone he could imagine from her mouth.

“I’ve been making jokes about you and me for months, and all this time, you were into girls,” he said. “I think that might be the biggest thing we have in common. What are we doing playing board games? We could have gone out on the town, picked up some ladies together...”

“Absolutely not,” Edelgard said. “And Hubert, put that away.”

Hubert, who had long since fallen into one of his usual lurking spells, obediently slipped his knife back into his sleeve. Sylvain chuckled.

“Duly noted,” he said. “Duly noted.”

Though Sylvain hadn’t really thought Edelgard would take him up on an offer to pick up girls, it did remind him of how little time he had left in Garreg Mach before graduation. Graduation meant going back to Faerghus, probably Fhirdiad or wherever his father insisted he go, and he didn’t look forward to that. The girls in Fhirdiad never wore short skirts without stockings or left their collars unbuttoned; they’d freeze if they did. And while going out hunting for girls might have been a good way to bid Garreg Mach goodbye, it felt too solitary — he wanted someone to have a last hurrah _with_. The closest he had for that was Lorenz, but Sylvain envisioned working as a team, and nights out with Lorenz tended towards competition. Claude was probably too busy with house nonsense this late in the year, Dorothea didn’t like threesomes and Hilda needed at least forty-eight hours notice before she’d bother going out. Anyone else either had no interest, or was so sheltered or virginal that they had no idea what a night picking up girls even entailed.

In a fairer world, Felix might have been great for that kind of thing. There was no reason their ability to synchronize on the battlefield couldn’t translate to picking up girls, but alas, Felix was a stick in the mud. A stick in concrete, even. There was no sense in even asking after being brusquely turned down so many times.

But, alone or not, Sylvain knew he had to make the best of it. In between classes, extra-curricular activities, training, away missions, practice battles, studying for exams and his usual hook-ups, he somehow had to find time to go into town and give himself a good send-off. Edelgard being gone again and missing their board games proved to be a perfect gap in his schedule. Even if she wasn’t going with him — being realistic, she would never, ever partake in that kind of debauchery — at least she still made his send-off possible. He figured he’d raise a glass to her. She’d be with him in spirit.

So, with a cloak to guard against the late winter chill, a flask and some coin in his satchel, and a knife in his belt in case he ran into trouble, Sylvain snuck out to head into town. It wasn’t difficult to escape the knights that patrolled at night; this late in the semester, Sylvain knew their routes by heart, and he was on good terms with enough of them to talk his way out of being reported if he slipped up. He crept across the lawns instead of walking the cobblestone paths, and he lingered close to the building walls, where shadows would hide him better.

That’s when he turned a corner and bounced off of a guard’s chest. Sylvain caught himself, just barely, and he fished around in his head for the best excuse for this particular night.

“Sylvain,” his interloper said, shocked.

“I— Dimitri?” Sylvain replied, equally shocked. “What are you doing out here this late?”

“I could ask you the same,” Dimitri replied. “It’s past curfew.”

Sylvain laced his fingers together and put them behind his head, smiling.

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said.

They were at an impasse, but neither moved. Sylvain wondered if Dimitri was going to pull rank and send him back to his bed, but Dimitri just shook his head.

“I see Edelgard hasn’t managed to correct your penchant for mischief,” Dimitri said. “Is it terrible that I’m relieved? I feel as though I spent so many years chasing after you... I would have been hurt if you changed so readily for her.”

“Not a chance,” Sylvain said, though he knew he had changed, at least a little. Edelgard had taught him to think more carefully about his actions and consequences, and he thought that maybe it made him better at mischief, rather than less inclined to be mischievous. He shrugged it off. “I only ever want to be me, you know.”

“I know,” Dimitri said, and he got a fond look in his eye. “You always will be.”

Sylvain smiled.

“What keeps you out of bed?” he asked.

“I just finished a late discussion with Edelgard,” Dimitri said. He looked like he was confessing to something. Sylvain figured they saw each other quite a bit, given they had to liaison about house matters, but he was intrigued, too. Wasn't Edelgard leaving tonight? Dimitri gave a little huff of amusement when Sylvain failed to hide his puzzled look, and he asked: “What sort of mischief are you up to tonight? Dare I ask?”

“You just did,” Sylvain said. He paused and then decided to throw chance to the wind. Why not? It was so close to the end of the semester, he might as well just be honest about his business. “I’m going into town to party. I know it’s not usually your thing, but you’re welcome to come with me, if you’d like. Just get some drinks, if you don’t want to...”

He made a lewd hand gesture. Dimitri raised his eyebrows. He was positive that Dimitri would decline, but Dimitri nodded.

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to bend the rules just this once,” he replied. “If you can promise we’ll be back well before dawn, that is.”

“Of course,” Sylvain said. He wasn’t about to turn down a rare chance to spend time together on such easy terms. He reached over and clapped Dimitri on the back, a grin on his face. “Before dawn. Got it. Let’s go, Your Highness.”

The trip through the marketplace to the front gates was the trickiest, as the gates were always closed at night. Sylvain was well prepared for that, too, bribing the guard on duty with a couple coins and promising to be back before sunrise with a story from the evening. Dimitri watched the interaction go down with wide eyes, but he said nothing until they were well out of earshot of the gates. The night was still, with only the crunching of their boots on the gravel road. Snow had struggled to stay on the ground this year.

“Do you really do that all the time?” Dimitri asked.

“Yeah,” Sylvain said, hoping he sounded casual enough that it wasn't a confession. “I always have good stories to pay him with, because it’s always fun. You’ll see.”

It was also fun, in an unusual way, to reveal his secrets — the parts of the man he was at Garreg Mach, the man he’d grown into since leaving Fhirdiad.

It wasn’t that Sylvain thought he had changed drastically, or that Dimitri wouldn’t recognize him in the ten months they’d been at Garreg Mach. Quite the opposite: he felt he had never been more himself. Garreg Mach had afforded him a freedom that Fhirdiad never could. He was fed, laundered and housed in exchange for dedicating himself to his education, and yet the only supervision he had was split across hundreds of students. If he chose to skip class, it would take a messenger over a week to inform his family, and it would take a week longer for them to send a response, so he had nothing greater to fear from skirting rules aside from a detention or a lecture from a nun. If he flirted with a girl, she didn’t have friends or family at a Northern court with all the dirt on his family, and so he didn’t have to think about crest-hunters as much. If he wanted to stay up at all hours talking with his friends, no nanny was going to lean over his shoulder or tug him by his ear to bed. He never had to think twice about exploring anything new — no one except his closest friends would question him, and even then, they’d grown into their freedoms, too. (Mostly.) He had never been a better rider, a better fighter, or a better lover.

At Garreg Mach, Sylvain felt like he finally had a taste of who he could have been if he wasn’t destined to carry on his house’s legacy.

That Sylvain had potential.

After all these months in the Black Eagles, he itched to share it with Dimitri, too — he wanted Dimitri to know everything was alright. He was confident. He was _happy_.

He wondered if Dimitri ever felt happy.

He hopped a short fence and beckoned for Dimitri to follow him so they could cut across a field, and he watched Dimitri vault over it, a smile on his face. Sylvain thought he could maybe share that confidence, that happiness. Maybe it would do Dimitri well to disconnect, to forget being the Crown Prince or being the victim of a cruel world, and for just one night, enjoy himself in the city.

Maybe that was all Dimitri needed.

Out in the crisp air, far from any soul, they could talk and chat and laugh a little. Sylvain expected Dimitri to balk here or there, when their boots were muddied by the fields or when Sylvain passed him the flask of whiskey he’d pilfered from Jeralt’s emptied office, but he didn’t. Dimitri even laughed a little, taking a short swig and then cringing at how powerful the taste was. He didn’t even stop to scold Sylvain once, and that put a lightness in Sylvain’s step: he couldn’t believe his luck.

(He felt tempted to ask Dimitri what he'd talked to Edelgard about. He didn't think Edelgard would tell him if he asked, but Dimitri might, under old bonds of friendship. Maybe later in the evening, he decided, when they'd had a few drinks.)

They reached the village. It was mostly asleep, with lanterns and candles in the window growing fewer by the minute, but light poured from the taverns. Sylvain traced a familiar path to his favourite one, Dimitri following behind.

“I’ve never done this before,” Dimitri remarked, as they crossed the threshold into the first tavern. The warmth inside from the lanterns and the carousing bodies felt even brighter after walking through the cold darkness for twenty minutes. Sylvain shucked off his cloak and then took Dimitri’s, and he hung them both up. Dimitri looked around a bit, shuffling to the side when other patrons wanted to leave; it was crowded enough that Sylvain had to raise his voice a bit to reply.

“No kidding,” Sylvain said. He nodded his head towards the bar. “Come. Let’s get some beer in you, it goes down easier than whisky.”

Dimitri followed him through, gingerly pushing through people despite Sylvain just merrily shouldering a path. Sylvain dropped a few coins on the bar and got drinks in return, and he took a big sip off the top of one as he passed the other to Dimitri.

Dimitri chuckled.

“You certainly seem at home here,” he said. He cast his gaze around anxiously. Was he worried about being recognized? “I think we’re the youngest people out tonight.”

“Nah,” Sylvain said. “There’s plenty of guys our age. They just look older, on account of toiling in the fields and all. We educated gentlemen of privilege and genteel birth get to hang onto our youth.”

He smirked and raised his stein. Dimitri gave a silent huff of acknowledgement, somewhere between amusement and guilt, and clinked his stein against Sylvain’s. Sylvain silently thanked Edelgard, and then Dimitri, too.

“What do you do next?” Dimitri asked.

“We find some good company, of course. Like them,” Sylvain said, gesturing with his beer. “Those girls over there.”

Dimitri leaned in close to find Sylvain’s line of sight, and Sylvain watched him for a reaction. Dimitri appraised them and then nodded. The girls in question were pretty, and a little bit older, if only by a couple years. Sylvain considered older girls slightly more challenging than girls their own age, but he also thought it was better where Dimitri was concerned. Mature women appreciated subtlety more, Sylvain thought, and were more interested in earnestness. Dimitri would fare better with those standards. He possessed an affable charm and a particular conversational politeness that worked well with strangers, and Sylvain had no doubt that he could get the conversation rolling and trust Dimitri not to embarrass them.

Sylvain went over to them and introduced himself with his middle name, and Dimitri followed suit — it was cute that he was a touch shy about it. Sylvain bought them drinks, and sure enough, within ten minutes the four of them were nestled around a table with steins of beer, heads together to talk over the din. Sylvain split them off pretty fast, too; the brunette was a bit more open and eager, so she would be a better match for the more reserved Dimitri. The blonde seemed a touch less interested, but she wouldn’t be a tough nut for Sylvain to crack, so he angled for her.

“What do you do, Alexandre?” the brunette asked, already cozying in. She had that look in her eye, and Sylvain knew that any conversation from their mouths was just prelude to going upstairs or finding an alley to fuck in. He wasn’t sure if Dimitri knew that, as instead of offering some polite answer, Dimitri looked at Sylvain for guidance.

“We’re both soldiers in a linked horses battalion,” Sylvain said. That was his go-to answer, and as usual, the girls didn’t bat an eye. “Alexandre here is actually up for a promotion soon, so we’re drinking to his success.”

“Really?” the brunette said, smiling. “Congratulations! I bet you’re really good.”

“He’s great,” Sylvain said. “You couldn’t meet a more committed soldier. And he’s not half-bad at dancing, either.”

“Oh no,” Dimitri interjected, immediately going red in the face, but the girls were already interested. “I’m not a good dancer at all.”

“Don’t be so modest,” Sylvain said, “you should have seen him at the Officer’s Academy dance a couple years ago; I think all the judges fell in love with him.”

“Syl—my friend,” Dimitri protested, but the brunette giggled and leaned a little closer into his side. When he talked, her gaze kept dropping to his lips. Dimitri said: “Pay him no attention, he’s just trying to rile me up.”

“There’s nothing wrong with getting riled up,” the blonde said. The tavern was so crowded that they had to sit very close, and Sylvain could feel the length of her thigh pressed up against his, and so he slipped a hand under the table and spanned his palm up her leg to rest on the inside of her knee. She glanced sidelong at him, and he just smiled, and so did she. He drifted up a little higher.

“Well, consider me riled, then,” Dimitri replied.

The girls laughed, and so did Sylvain. Dimitri smiled. Sylvain thought he looked good like that, crammed with laughing strangers, smiling over a beer. It made him feel warm.

“It’s so noisy in here, I can barely hear myself think,” Sylvain remarked, his hand stopping only for the volume of the blonde's skirts. “You two want to come upstairs? I can get us a room so we can talk a little more privately.”

The brunette nodded, getting to her feet already with an excited _ooo_, and she linked her arm with Dimitri’s. Dimitri rose to his feet politely, but he shot Sylvain a concerned look. Sylvain ignored it; he was doing just fine.

“Just a minute, then,” Sylvain said. He slipped away from them and pushed his way through the crowd to the tavern-master, and he wordlessly pointed up and fished a couple more coins from his satchel. The tavern-master nodded and they swapped coins for keys, and Sylvain made his way back to the girls and Dimitri, but he figured there was no point in pushing back through just to turn around again, so he waved for their attention and then pointed upstairs. When they met at the stairs, Sylvain took the blonde by the hand and marched her up. He glanced over his shoulder and watched the brunette seize upon Dimitri. Good.

As soon as they reached the top, Sylvain found their door and unlocked it, and he stepped in and turned up the oil lanterns. The room was small and it only had one double bed, but that was fine. Sylvain flashed Dimitri a grin. Dimitri looked nervous, but he smiled back before the brunette reached up to capture him in a kiss. She pulled him right across the room and down onto one side of the bed.

Sylvain glanced at the blonde and pulled her up against him with a hand on the small of her back, and she got pressed up the whole length of him. Her loose tunic belied a nicer figure than he’d expected, and feeling the shape of her underneath was exciting. She giggled and he kissed her temple, her cheek and then her neck, and then he scooped her up and brought her to the bed, too. With Dimitri and the brunette making out just a foot away, Sylvain stripped himself of his shirt and belt, and then relieved the blonde of her tunic. She reached for the buttons on his trousers and he pet down her side while she did; he always liked it when lovers took that kind of initiative. It was thrilling to have someone that eager to have you.

And though Sylvain liked to start these things by going down on women, with Dimitri there he felt a little _seen_, and so he opted instead to give the blonde a pointed little nudge down. She took out his cock and set about kissing up the side of it. Sylvain let out a long exhale, leant back on his hands and then sat up straighter again when he found himself leaning against Dimitri.

Dimitri suddenly stood up and pushed the brunette off him. Sylvain didn’t quite see it happen, but the sound she made and the way the bed shifted when Dimitri rose registered in his periphery. He looked up. Dimitri fumbled to fix his untied pant laces and took off out the door, shutting it behind him with a swift snap. The blonde raised her head, a hand lingering on Sylvain’s cock. Sylvain let out a hard breath.

“What happened?” Sylvain asked the brunette.

“I don’t know,” the brunette replied, a little stunned. “I got my hand in his trousers and he...”

Ah. Sylvain watched the door for a second and then decided not to follow; he used to have trouble when he was being watched, too. Sylvain reached for the brunette and beckoned her to join them.

“Hey,” Sylvain hushed her. “Don’t worry about him, he probably just needs a minute. C’mere, come play with us while you wait.”

She hesitated, but then she scooted over, and suddenly Sylvain found himself with not enough hands for everything he wanted to do. He kissed the brunette and put one hand to the back of the blonde’s head. He’d have to multitask, which could be distracting, but Sylvain reasoned it was only for a moment.

Dimitri didn’t come back.

With a weird wrist cramp, rubbery legs and a pleasant feeling buzzing in his veins, Sylvain bid the girls a cheerful goodbye and left the room. He dropped off the key with a _see you next week_ from the tavern-master that felt unintentionally bittersweet. He looked for Dimitri but didn’t find him anywhere in the tavern; he didn’t feel worried, as Dimitri couldn’t have gotten too far, but to go from double-date to a threesome to hunting down his friend wasn’t exactly the thrilling end to the evening he envisioned. He stepped out of the tavern and into the street, where it was much quieter, and the sky was already starting to lighten. Sylvain wondered, for a moment, if Dimitri had just gone back on his own.

“Finally,” Dimitri said, but he said it as if it was a curse, sharp and unpleasant. Sylvain turned and spotted Dimitri sitting on a doorstep of a closed shop just down the road, his massive figure hunched over on the short step. Dimitri rose to his feet and fixed Sylvain with a glare. “I’ve been sitting out here for almost an hour.”

Sylvain decided not to let Dimitri’s soured mood drain his spirit. Maybe he could talk Dimitri down.

“Why didn’t you come back up?” Sylvain asked. “She was crazy into you. She was fun!”

“I wasn’t going to sleep with her,” Dimitri said, as though it were the most ludicrous thing he had ever heard. “I didn’t come here to bed random women.”

Sylvain had no idea what to say to that, so he just put up his hands at a loss.

“I’m confused,” he said. “Why do you think we came here?”

“I came to spend time with you,” Dimitri said.

_Oh. _Sylvain felt oddly touched, but the absurdity of it wasn’t lost on him, either. It wasn’t as though he’d gone knocking on Dimitri’s door, pulled him from bed, dragged him down to the city and pulled a blindfold off him to reveal waiting prostitutes and fountains of booze. He’d invited Dimitri on a whim to his own personal send-off party. Worse, he’d thought he’d been doing Dimitri a favour.

“Weren’t we?” Sylvain said. “I’m pretty sure I told you I was going to get laid, and we were having fun.”

“I wasn’t,” Dimitri said.

“Well, okay,” Sylvain said. There came the drain. “I don’t know what to say. Up until you stormed off, you seemed like you were having a nice time.”

Dimitri heaved a dramatic sigh. Sylvain knew he was trying very hard to control his temper, and as much as he wanted to avoid an outburst, the idea of tiptoeing around something he’d been so clear about drove him a little mad, too.

“I don’t understand why that’s fun to you,” Dimitri said. Sylvain braced himself. “Lying to those girls, calling us by different names, pretending we were mere soldiers...”

“We didn't lie,” Sylvain said. “We _are_ soldiers. Those _are_ parts of our names. Did you really want me to walk up to some girl and say, _oh, here’s Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, the Crown Prince of Faerghus, would you like to slobber on his knob tonight?_”

Dimitri looked appalled. Doubly so because Sylvain let his voice rise a little, and a couple people hanging around the door to the tavern turned to look. Sylvain put his arm around Dimitri and encouraged him to walk away; together they strolled down the street, Dimitri fuming quietly.

“Let’s just go back to the monastery,” Sylvain said, tersely. “It’s way past your bedtime.”

Dimitri scoffed.

“You said we’d be back well before dawn, and the sun is on the cusp of rising,” he said. “I should have known better, considering you. I don’t know why I agreed to this.”

Sylvain bit his tongue. There wasn’t a point in engaging. For a moment they walked in relative silence, boots crunching on the wet gravel and Dimitri huffing and puffing his frustration in a way that positively radiated fury. It made Sylvain unsure of whether to try to soothe him or not, as nothing he could say seemed likely to make the situation better. At the same time, he felt his own quiet fury for being forced to end _his_ evening making excuses for doing what he pleased with his own time. So what if it was an all-nighter, or crude, or irresponsible? They were only going to be young once. They were never going to be happy or carefree in the monastery ever again.

Why was everyone so excited to bid goodbye to their youths and chain themselves up to their family legacies? What was the point in wishing away the only freedom you’d ever enjoy?

Felix was right to want to go.

Then Dimitri muttered: “Edelgard should be firmer on you. What is she thinking, letting her students go off in all hours of the night, drinking and carousing?”

“It’s none of Edelgard’s business, nor does she decide to _let_ me do anything,” Sylvain replied.

“Of course it’s her business,” Dimitri shot back. “What would happen if you were in a brawl, or if you went missing, or if something happened with one of those girls? It would reflect on your house, on her.”

_Forget it_, Sylvain thought. Dimitri could have had the time of his life and still ended the evening being guilty about shirking his responsibilities. There wasn’t a point in convincing Dimitri of the value of freedom, not when he was so thoroughly committed to maintaining a careful, meticulous image of _propriety, _of what was socially acceptable for a future king to do. Sylvain thought that was suffocating — it was the same line of thought that drove him mad about his family, about all of Faerghus, about leaving the monastery. What was the point in dressing up the shitshow as though it were a beauty pageant?

But it was his future, too.

They walked back the rest of the way in awkward silence. 


	16. Trust

Just as predicted, Sylvain, a known psychic at least where it concerned lovers, woke up alone.

He laid there for half an hour or more scraping his brain for ways to pry conversation from Felix’s lips and came up with nothing. He grew tired of lazing about, so he set about his day: he jerked himself off, washed up again, dressed himself and made his way down to breakfast. The dining hall was at its busiest at that hour, and he had just fixed himself some tea and was looking for a seat when Edelgard tapped him on his shoulder. They exchanged their pleasantries and then she asked the eternal damning question:

“Was everything alright last night?”

“Felix was just in a bad mood,” Sylvain said. “I bet he'll be itching to get out of here as soon as possible, but... well, it was a long shot to begin with, right?”

Edelgard didn’t seem so sure. She frowned.

“Really?” she asked. “When I saw him this morning, he was pleasant enough. I certainly didn’t get the impression that he intended to leave.”

Sylvain felt tempted to catch the little craven and strangle him until he opened up, but all he could do in Edelgard’s company was smile and hope he didn’t look or sound too pissed.

“Is that so? He was real mad about Dimitri last night. You know, Felix thinks he’s over what happened, but he isn’t. If anything, he’s the least adjusted of us all, and I know that’s a lot, coming from me. You get that, right? You can only be mad about a dead man for so long before you have to move on, but I don’t know if he’s ready yet.”

“Understandably,” Edelgard said, in that way that was tightly polite. Sylvain knew he was sharing too much, but she just nodded. “Perhaps going to Fhirdiad would be of some comfort to him, even if it would be painful at first.”

Sylvain wasn’t so sure. Felix didn’t want to address the myriad of ways he was haunted by Dimitri, and Sylvain didn’t think that Edelgard could pry it out of him if he, Felix’s best friend, could not. It was a stalemate.

He realized she was watching him, and she looked like she had something more to say, but whatever it was, she didn’t bother. He wondered what she was thinking, but he could never guess. She was impossible to read sometimes.

“On a happier note,” Edelgard said. “Would you like to see Byleth? She’s feeling a little better this morning and would like to see you. Felix is already upstairs with her.”

Sylvain felt his mood lift, crash, and then lift again regardless. He was certainly going to throttle Felix, and maybe Edelgard too, for stringing along this conversation, but the Professor? He wanted to see the Professor. He nodded.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Lead the way.”

The Imperial Household was not unlike House Aegir in some ways, though it certainly had grander bones. Edelgard led him through the entrance hall, and Sylvain looked down to find himself walking on tiled floors made of many interlocking colors. The walls were strung with some of the same tapestries as the throne room, as though Edelgard had grown tired of looking upon such decadence. Some parts of the wall were bare, the paint-and-plaster discoloured where paintings used to hang.

Edelgard smiled wryly as she watched him look them over.

“May I make a confession?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” Sylvain replied.

“We put the paintings of aged emperors in storage, without their frames, to decide what to do with them later,” she explained. “But it took a great deal of convincing on my part to not have them burned. I felt it would be cathartic to erase tributes to people who led so many years of irresponsible rule.”

“But you didn’t,” Sylvain said, “because it would be irresponsible to cover up history.”

Edelgard nodded. She kept leading him down the hall, her heels clicking on the tile loudly, one after the other. She always walked like she had somewhere to go, or like the ground had personally caused her some delay.

“I wouldn’t do it, of course,” she said. Sylvain felt that same old uncontrollable urge to muss her up, make her do something spontaneous, reckless, irresponsible. She put a finger to the perfect bow of her lips and said: “But sometimes, when something isn’t going well or I’m cross about something, I just think about them and...”

She made a vague gesture.

Sylvain chuckled.

“You could keep a couple painters very busy for their entire careers, just commissioning portraits of people who annoy you and burning them.”

Edelgard just smiled at him over her shoulder and kept walking. He imagined what she was thinking — _what an irresponsible use of the tax dollars that funded her personal life!_ — but she said nothing, and so nor did he, instead watching the little gold beads around the back of her hair bob with every step she took.

They arrived at a door at the end of the hall, and as if on queue, it opened. Sylvain pondered how it was possible until Hubert appeared in the space. _Of course_. As she passed through the doors, Hubert took her hand and kissed it, and so Sylvain jokingly offered his, as well. Hubert merely looked at his hand as though he had offered him some nasty, slimy thing. Sylvain grinned.

The room was a small drawing room with a small table with only six chairs. Felix was already sat at it, picking at a plate of sausages and egg and fried toast. Byleth sat across from him, and Sylvain smiled immediately at the sight of the back of her head, her hair long and glossy.

“Darling,” Edelgard said, placing her hands on Byleth’s shoulders and leaning in close to her ear. “Sylvain is here.”

Byleth turned. Her inhumanly bright blue eyes found Sylvain immediately, and he stopped in his tracks for a moment. She tilted her head, waiting for him to say something, and then she smiled, rising from her seat. There was a certain economy to her motion that normal people didn’t possess, and it extended to her facial expressions. It had been odd, in that year at Garreg Mach, to watch her learn what Sylvain had considered basic human states of being: to smile, to frown, to sigh. In early months, it had made classes unusual, particularly when a blank stare accompanied both praise and critique. Towards the end of the year, it made earning a smile feel that much more incredible, or a frown that much more shameful.

God, he missed her and her smile, and he hadn’t realized just how powerfully until right that moment.

“Hey,” he said.

He was delighted to see not just a smile, but some deep recognition. It made his heart swell. She came a step closer and Sylvain gathered her in a hug, a laugh slipping from him in the process. He nearly swept her off her feet, and when he set her down again, she gave him a scolding look, to which he could only grin.

Being scolded with just a glance felt delightfully powerful.

“Aww, come on, I’ve missed you, Professor,” he said. He cupped her face a moment, and risking death, kissed her forehead. She just shook her head at him, still smiling, and then she gestured at Felix, who had risen to his feet with the rest of them. Sylvain found Felix smiling, too, and despite it all that made him smile even more.

Byleth reached in to Sylvain’s face and brushed his bangs away.

“I know,” he said. “I was going for a sort of artful bedhead thing.”

She nodded, and then she gestured at his collar. Sylvain wasn’t sure what she was saying.

“You’re covered in love marks,” Hubert said.

Sylvain was momentarily amused by Hubert saying something like _love marks_, but then he realized Felix must have been a little too enthusiastic after all. Sylvain laughed, adjusting how the neckline of his shirt sat.

“Don’t worry,” Sylvain played it off. “I haven’t changed _that_ much.”

Byleth shook her head.

“Come on, you can’t say you’re any different,” he teased. “Newlywed and all?”

Sylvain poked her collarbone, then covered by a tightly wrapped housecoat. Byleth was near impossible to embarrass, but she made a wonderful conduit to embarrassing Edelgard. He loved getting to fluster Edelgard, and even without looking at her now, he could feel it radiating off her. Byleth just reached up to peel back the collar of her housecoat, revealing a similar mark. Sylvain positively howled with laughter. Edelgard swept in front of him and took her wife by the hands, leading Byleth back to her seat at the breakfast table.

“I think that’s quite a bit of excitement for the moment,” she said. She turned to look at Sylvain and scold him. “All this fooling around — _please_ reserve yourself.”

“Aww, come on, we’re all friends here,” Sylvain said. “It’s okay, Edelgard, if you don’t have a lot of practice, it’s easy to get carried away. You’ll get better at it so poor Byleth here isn’t constantly having to wear high collars.” He paused abruptly, realizing something naughty, and so he added: “Unless... all those turtlenecks she wore back in the day...?”

He watched Edelgard go from flustered to mortified. She released Byleth and swatted his arm.

“Sylvain Jose Gautier, that is highly inappropriate.”

Byleth just smiled over Edelgard’s shoulder, a hand over her mouth, and she gently steered Edelgard’s attention back to her.

“My love,” Edelgard said, and it was possibly the closest to petulant that Sylvain had ever heard. Her rigid posture relaxed, just slightly. “Well, I _don’t_ think it’s very funny, but...”

She trailed, sighing.

“Do not worry,” Hubert intoned. “You have plenty of time to improve, my lady. I’ve never been one for a low collar, either.”

Edelgard shot him a warning look. Sylvain wasn’t sure why, but then he saw Felix’s eyebrows raise and something clicked.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Oh shit!”

He pointed between them.

“All three of you...?”

Edelgard went about as red as her dress.

“I _thought_ we agreed not to make it public,” Edelgard said, tersely.

“As Sylvain said,” Hubert replied. “We’re all friends here. What is the point, if we cannot share? Now the ice is broken, and we can eat breakfast like normal people.”

Edelgard sighed, and though she didn’t look any less embarrassed for it, she let it go. Sylvain thought his cheeks might tear from grinning so hard.

“Edelgard!” he exclaimed. He threw an arm around her, which she suffered, knowing her horse had already fled the stables. “I would have _never_ thought you’d have it in you. _Two_ partners? I’m so proud of you. I’ve got lots of tips if you’d like! It can be really hard in that pat-your-head, rub-your-belly sort of way at times...”

“It’s not the same,” Edelgard protested. “Taking numerous lovers is an accepted practice for the Emperor...”

“I thought you were abolishing all that stuff,” Sylvain teased.

“_Sylvain_,” Edelgard said hotly, covering her face with both hands.

Byleth burst out laughing. It was about the most beautiful thing Sylvain had ever heard, and in that moment, he felt nothing but joy.

With his belly full and feeling strengthened by not being a total fool in Byleth’s presence,Sylvain left the Imperial quarters, Felix trailing behind him. Felix was in somewhat better spirits, even to the point of wearing a smug little smirk; Byleth had praised him, too, and she was one of the only people whose opinions Felix valued unconditionally. Good. If Felix was in a good mood, then both of them could forget last night, or at the very least pretend it hadn’t happened at all, exactly as Felix wanted. Sylvain couldn’t let it bother him forever, and so he fell upon the same conclusion he took for every bad date, every bad argument, every shitty thing _he’d_ ever done.

He had to keep moving forward.

The problem here was that he did not want to ruin Felix’s friendship away in the process, which is what he tended towards when moving forward. The last two times this had happened, their lives were so tumultuous that there wasn't time to talk, so this felt like the first time it might actually ruin them. And so, as they walked down the stairs, Sylvain put an arm around Felix in a firm, one-armed squeeze. Felix made a grumpy little noise, but he made no effort to push him off. Sylvain sighed, pulling him in a little tighter as they walked. Felix looked up at him, and Sylvain met his eyes and put on a smile.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re still cool in my books. Honest.”

“That’s a relief,” Felix said, but he sounded a little sarcastic. “Thanks.”

Sylvain decided to ignore the attitude. He wasn’t dealing with Felix’s damage like that.

“No problem,” Sylvain said. “But please. Next time you’re pissed about Dimitri, just talk to me first.”

Felix frowned at him. Sylvain felt like he might get sacked if he pushed the envelope any further, but Felix was pretty reasonable under all those high emotions, and Sylvain could bank on that. He held on, looking ahead of them for a moment. The halls were emptying out as people found their offices, their meetings and their audiences. He looked back to Felix and gave him a pointed look. He didn’t want to repeat himself.

“It has nothing to do with Dimitri,” Felix said, finally. “Sylvain. That was a lifetime ago.”

Sylvain stopped short, and he jerked Felix to a stop with him. Felix wrenched from Sylvain’s arm, but Sylvain caught one hand, and then the other, making Felix face him. A part of him wanted to be pissed off at Felix for letting Dimitri ruin their lives even after rotting away in the ground for a handful of years, but there was nothing to be done about that. It was on Felix.

“Hey,” he said, firmly but as kind as he could muster. “Let’s say it wasn’t. But if it ever happens again, literally all I’m asking: talk to me first. Don’t spring that shit on me.”

Felix looked confused.

“Alright,” Felix said, relenting. “I’ll talk to you next time.”

“Thank you,” Sylvain said, giving his hands a quick squeeze and then letting him go entirely. He let out a sigh of relief he hadn’t known he was holding, and for a moment the two of them stood there, Felix not quite meeting his eyes. Sylvain ribbed him. “And hey. If you ever want me to change your world...”

He nudged Felix’s side.

“What the fuck,” Felix said, screwing his eyes shut and putting a hand to his forehead. Sylvain laughed — laughing felt better, especially when he saw Felix was flushed in the cheeks. “You’re a disaster! I hate this conversation.”

“Aww,” Sylvain said. “Water under the bridge. What do you want to do with the rest of the day?”

“I don’t know,” Felix said, and he breathed out the last of his irritation and thought about it. He settled on something with the kind of predictability Sylvain had known since they were children: “We could see those swords Edelgard mentioned.”

Sylvain clapped him on the back.

“We can see those swords,” he agreed.

Edelgard did have a very nice weapon collection. Sylvain felt some hesitation upon reaching the underground room they were being stored in, realizing that there would be a lot of bad reminders in there, but Felix walked in as though he owned the place, and Sylvain had felt some strength in following him. 

That was a good thing about Felix. For what he lacked in trust, Felix had courage in spades, the kind of courage most people only dreamed of. Outside of talking to girls, Sylvain had never felt anything remotely like it off the battlefield or without similar undue pressure on his life, and even then, he often felt that he was just one bad encounter away from taking a knee. Felix could meander down the rows of weapons and look upon them as though they hadn’t belonged to people they had known. Sylvain felt awash with guilt.

The collection was headed by a number of the Hero’s relics that Enbarr had amassed. The first was Crusher, the great fronded axe of House Dominic. It had been given to Edelgard by Annette after the war, when she’d hung up her war regalia to teach at the School of Sorcery. Outside of battle, Sylvain could appreciate how powerful Annette had been to even hold it up, let alone swing it.

“That thing made her look even tinier than usual,” Sylvain said. “Completely puny. I couldn’t take it seriously.”

“I could,” Felix said. “She wielded it with pride.”

“Pride didn’t make her any taller,” Sylvain said. “She was like a baby with a giant mallet, even when she got all elegant. You didn’t think she looked like, tiny?”

Felix rolled his eyes and moved along to the next.

Thunderbrand was beautiful, nestled in its custom sheath, its bone-like structure taking on the slightest gleam under the lanterns. Despite its beauty, it stirred only contempt in Sylvain for all the times its previous owner had enforced the Archbishop’s rule to Dimitri’s detriment. He saw Felix gaze upon it with some level of neutrality — Sylvain supposed Felix could compartmentalize and just appreciate any sword. Sylvain wished he could do that.

Failnaught hung next, as tall as Claude. The great bow seemed heavy to Sylvain, but he was a man who had only ever used a bow in combat when he had relieved it from an enemy and then used it as a melee weapon against them. In Claude’s hands, it had been a sight to behold in battle. Sylvain had only seen it once, when Claude had defended and then relinquished Deirdru. He walked by the bow with his chin up, and he could feel Felix itching to say something about Deirdru, but Felix wisely held his tongue. They'd talked about it before. Sylvain never wanted to revisit it again.

But, then again, perhaps Felix held it because he’d seen the Aegis Shield, his own family relic. Felix laughed, a sound that almost startled Sylvain as much as it tickled him to see Felix step up to it and take it down. He buckled it to his arm like he’d been waiting to have it for years.

“I didn’t know you left it here,” Sylvain remarked.

“I left it to her,” Felix said. “It never occurred to me that I’d see it again.”

Felix smiled. It was deep and genuine.

“When I wore this and activated my crest... I felt invincible,” Felix said. He took on a sword stance, despite being unarmed, and mimed a strike at Sylvain’s ribs. Sylvain mimed a block, amused, and as Felix followed through with the stroke in slow-motion, Sylvain felt a vibration on the air as his Crest activated.

“You gonna take it back?” Sylvain asked.

Felix didn’t seem sure. He straightened up and held the shield in his arm. It was the second-smallest of the relics, to Sylvain’s knowledge, and even then it was about the size of his torso. Felix gazed down at it.

“It would probably just attract trouble,” he said. “If anything happened to me, who knows whose hands it would fall into? No. Since I know it’s safe, it should probably stay with Edelgard.”

Sylvain nodded.

“Did Ingrid keep Lúin?” Felix asked.

“Yeah,” Sylvain said. “I assume she still has it.”

He knew what Felix was going to ask next. He both dreaded and anticipated the gut-punch of seeing the Lance of Ruin amongst the displayed weapons, but having Felix at his sidemade him feel less like running.

“You?” Felix asked.

“No,” he said. “I left it with Edelgard, but I don’t think she would have let me have it even if I wanted it.”

Felix frowned. Sylvain regretted saying it.

“It’s not really any of her business, right?” Sylvain added, shrugging like he was some sort of victim of Edelgard’s rigidity, her need to control them all. It felt a little better to save face, but Felix just looked at him, unmoved. “I mean. It’s my birthright. If I wanted it back, I’d just take it.”

“She was probably right to keep it,” Felix said.

Sylvain winced, which Felix did not notice, as he hung up the Aegis shield again, turned and looked down the hall. Sylvain followed his gaze to the Lance of Ruin. Felix walked right up to it, stepping up onto the base of its rack to reach it. Sylvain grasped at the air, as if he really could have stopped his friend, but Felix took the Lance of Ruin off its hooks and inspected it. The great weapon was large in his hands, and he looked up at it with some interest.

“What would you even do with it?” Felix asked. “Waste it on some scoundrel visiting your brothel?”

“It wasn’t _my_ brothel,” Sylvain replied, tersely.

“You _know_ what I meant."

Fair. Sylvain just walked past Felix, down to where there were more weapons — those swords were not legendary relics, but they were decidedly less well-kept, more brittle. Some were laid in open boxes on tables, nestled in cotton wrappings, and others balanced precariously on decorative stands. He could pretend they were more interesting until Felix got the point that he didn’t want to talk about it.

Felix watched him for a moment and then hung up the Lance of Ruin again. Sylvain heard it heavily rest into its hooks and felt the weight of it as if it were hung on his own shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Felix said. Sylvain glanced back at him, surprised. Felix still stood on the platform before the Lance, and for once, they were completely eye to eye. Felix nodded and said: “You'll find a reason to get it back.”

Sylvain felt touched, and it brought a tired smile to his face.

“I don’t think getting the Lance back is a real priority,” he said. “But thanks.”

Felix just nodded. He hopped down off the stand and breezed by Sylvain to the swords, and then was immediately distracted. Sylvain followed him, and for a moment he just bathed in this particular supportive attitude that he was sure was completely unique to Felix. _You’ll find a purpose_ from Felix was roughly equivalent to what _You have potential_ from Edelgard had meant to him back at Garreg Mach, but he was certain if he said so, Felix would call him a sentimental idiot and would never say it ever again.

Everyone seemed to want better for him, but hearing it from Felix...

Sylvain just meandered for a moment, internally basking in the feeling.

“So uh,” Sylvain said, strolling down the row, barely glancing over the swords in their carved wooden display stands. He watched Felix, who reluctantly looked up from one he’d seemed particularly interested in. “When I go to Fhirdiad, will you go with me as far as the mountains, at least?”

“Sure,” Felix said.

That felt too easy, but Sylvain decided to take it. He sidled around Felix, leaning against the table on his other side.

“You can't even stomach it for me, huh?” he asked. “Too afraid of getting played?”

Felix frowned, and he looked away for a moment, as if anyone might have possibly snuck in to eavesdrop.

"Played?"

"Edelgard," Sylvain said.

Felix grimaced. Sylvain did too. Maybe it wasn't nice to joke about that.

“You realize why she wants us to do this, don’t you?” Felix asked.

“We’ve spent more time in Fhirdiad than anyone else she knows,” Sylvain said, and then, realizing he was about to get corrected, he corrected himself: “She wants us to help Ingrid.”

Felix nodded.

“I think _anyone_ could find that dagger, or that room,” Felix replied. “She could send Hubert and he’d probably find it inside a week. I think her _entire_ goal is to make me take up Fraldarius again.”

“If that was the case, she wouldn't have let me do it,” Sylvain replied.

“She didn't even ask you,” Felix said.

“That’s just because I told her getting you was my last mission,” Sylvain said. He was regretting admitting that Edelgard didn’t trust him with the Lance. “If I hadn’t offered, she probably would have begged me.”

That kind of bravado didn’t work on Felix, and it didn’t work when talking about Edelgard, but Sylvain said it because it made him feel a little better.

“She didn’t need to, I suppose,” Felix replied. “She knows you want to prove yourself, and she knew she _already_ had you.”

“She didn’t have me,” Sylvain argued. “Up until that minute I didn’t have any intention of doing it, it was just... an impulse.”

“Was it?” Felix asked, doubtfully. Sylvain opened his mouth to argue, but then again, he didn’t know. He’d thought he’d insisted that he’d be done as soon as he got his money, and even in that conversation, he’d felt a very real fear at the idea of seeing Fhirdiad, or facing Ingrid. He felt that still. But somewhere along the way, his heart had changed, and he’d known what he was going to do, even if he some part of him didn’t want to.

“It’s what I have to do, Felix,” he said.

Felix looked away, and then seemed to grow frustrated.

“I think that’s what she _wants_ you to think,” Felix said. “She wants you to think it’s your idea, just like joining the Black Eagles, or staying with Dimitri instead of coming back with me, or...” He gestured dismissively. Was there a point in thinking of all their dirty laundry just to make a list of it? “All of it.”

“Those weren’t her choices,” Sylvain said. “I chose that. _All_ of it.”

“Did you?”

Sylvain let out a heavy breath, feeling exhausted. He could point out to Felix that this was exactly why they both should go to Fhirdiad and confront Dimitri’s ghost, but it didn’t seem worth the argument. He could no sooner force Felix to do that than he could force Felix to do anything: talk about his feelings, stop picking fights, any of it. Was there a sense in convincing him that he owned his own life, especially after Dimitri had consumed so much of it? Only Felix could do that.

“Yes, Felix,” he said. “I did.”

Felix shook his head.

“I did,” Sylvain repeated. “I’m not saying she didn’t influence me. I’m not saying she didn’t put me in some hard positions. And yeah, maybe I am still trying to please her. Go ahead and mock me for it. But at the end of the day I didn’t _have_ to do any of it, and she wasn’t going to make me. She couldn’t. I am the man I am today because of my choices, no one else’s.”

Felix said nothing, and then he let out an annoyed sound. Sylvain followed him down the hall as he moved to the next sword, and he watched as Felix tried to concentrate on that and pretend he’d run out of arguments. Sylvain waited.

“I just don’t think I can see Fhirdiad,” Felix said, finally.

“Why not?”

Felix pursed his lips. Sylvain fought the urge to needle, and instead he just waited it out.

“I’ve worked hard for my peace,” Felix said, finally. “Fhirdiad could make me question everything. I don’t know if I have it in me to do it all again.”

“I don’t know if I do either,” Sylvain admitted. “But even if it kills me, I have to try and make things right somehow. I know I can’t fix Gautier, or Fhirdiad, but if I could just... just make a difference in _some_ of it, I think I could live with myself.”

Felix looked at him, long and quiet and steady. Something didn’t sit with him right, and Sylvain watched him come to some conclusion and then swallow it.

Sylvain sighed. He sidled over to Felix, finger-walking along the edge of the table until he found Felix’s hand, and then he ran his fingertips up and down the edge of Felix’s arm, almost absently. Felix glanced at the offending touch but made no effort to stop him, and so Sylvain carried on, watching him.

“Felix,” Sylvain said, seriously. “I don’t just want to go. I _have_ to go. I have to take responsibility for myself.”

Felix held his gaze for a long moment.

“And I’ll go with you as far as Remire,” he said. “But I can’t go further.”

He looked away.

“Sorry.”

Sylvain ran his fingers up again, and then settled his palm on Felix’s shoulder. He squeezed, tightly. He felt deeply disappointed, in some visceral way, but he couldn’t muster up a way to say that. He thought Felix might brush him off if he did, so he swallowed it. He wasn’t surprised, anyway. He expected rejection.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You gotta do what you gotta do. I’m glad I’ll get to see you a little bit longer on the road, at least.”

Felix nodded. He put a hand over Sylvain’s, his skin warm. Sylvain couldn’t remember the last time Felix had made a gesture like that, at least not without some wild emotional overture, and he gazed at that hand with a touched sigh.

“Thank you,” Felix said.

“Any time,” Sylvain said.

And then Felix tried to pull away, but something struck Sylvain, and so he resisted, trapping Felix’s hand between his own. Felix’s brows knit low, and Sylvain leaned into his face, smiling suddenly.

“But,” he said, “I want you to remember something.”

“What?” Felix asked, somewhere between confusion and curiosity.

“You’re Felix fucking Hugo fucking Fraldarius,” Sylvain declared. He freed a hand and he jabbed Felix in the chest, and then jabbed him again, harder with each point: “You transferred to the Black Eagles. You defected from Faerghus and spied against it. You slaughtered tyrants. You faced down the Boar Prince and won. You liberated Fhirdiad. You fought the Immaculate One.”

Felix frowned at him, still, but he stood a little taller under Sylvain’s grip, his shoulders squared. Sylvain saw something behind his eyes, and so he jabbed him one more time.

“You chose to do those things. You can do anything you fucking want to,” he said.

Felix pushed him off.

“You’re right,” he said, a smirk blossoming on his face. “I did. I’m still not going with you, but I did.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said. Oh well, he had to try. He clapped Felix on the back hard, and Felix pushed him back harder. Sylvain grinned, stepping back against a display table. “You did!”

He pushed at Felix again, and for a moment they jostled each other, laughing and making their way down the row, the antiques rattling on their stands, the world beyond momentarily forgotten.

Days passed like dreams.

Given the prospect of two weeks with Felix before their departure, Sylvain felt happier than he had in a long time.

It was easy to put aside their mixed signals. The two of them were experts at putting the past behind them, after all, and their friendship ran deeper than any other root left in Sylvain’s life. He even found himself waking up earlier again, and though he wasn't up as early as Felix, it gave him some comfort to peel himself from the covers or away from whatever palace servant he'd bedded that night and go down to the courtyard to find Felix already training. Felix always greeted him with some sort of chastisement, which Sylvain shook off gamely. They had a couple weeks to kill while Edelgard prepared the relief army's march to Fhirdiad. Sylvain intended to make the best of it.

"Do you really still do this every morning?" Sylvain asked, lounging on the steps. The weather was getting colder and it made the stone cool, but he'd gotten himself a new coat with some of the money he'd been paid. Most of it was being sent to his child's mother, but he figured he needed at least a little for himself to get by. Felix eyed him with some unreadable and yet unmistakeable judgement. Sylvain just smiled.

"Do I train every morning?"

"Yeah."

"Yes," Felix replied, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

"How do you get better just doing the same thing over and over if you don't have anyone to spar with?" Sylvain asked.

Felix narrowed his eyes. Sylvain grinned, but then Felix said: "Why don't you spar with me, then?"

"Pass."

Sylvain admittedly had little interest in sparring with Felix. It was one thing to fight at his friend's side routing bandits, particularly ones with no formal combat training. It was another thing entirely to confirm his rustiness to a fellow ex-soldier, especially one as precise as Felix. And Felix had probably guessed anyway, so why confirm it for him?

Felix was not so easily deterred. He picked up a lance off a rack of weapons and tossed it over, and Sylvain caught it, as he did not want to start his day by taking a length of solid oak to his teeth.

"One round," Felix demanded.

Sylvain stood up with a groan. He shifted the lance's weight in his hand, testing out its balance. It was just a common training lance, the head just a block of soft wood with a blunted tip, but it would be difficult to blame a perfectly good tool when Felix trounced him quickly. At the very least, he thought, he hadn't lost any calluses; a shovel wasn't quite the same as a lance, but it nocked into the crook of his thumb the same way, and he had, on more than one occasion, swung a shovel around out behind the stables, just to see if his old self had given up and died yet.

Sylvain let the lance's tip fall to the ground, just inches from tapping it. He found Felix watching him with some hopeful look in his eyes, the corners of his mouth taut with challenge. Sylvain thought if he delayed much more, Felix might just attack him and remove all choice.

"Come on," Felix said. "I haven't sparred against someone with decent training since the war ended. I want to know if I've actually improved."

"Edelgard would, if you asked her to," Sylvain said. He stepped away from the stairs, just enough to have clearance behind him, and he turned the lance in his hand. Felix stepped back, but Sylvain's hands moved with an old practice, a particular muscle memory that had long gone dormant, and he wasn't about to lose control. He spun it in a circle around him, the tip passing in front of him and then behind, and he cringed when he heard the scrape of the tip hitting the stone, just barely enough for him to _feel_ it without losing momentum. He readjusted and did it again, quicker. When that went smoothly, he tried passing it between his hands behind his back. It was sloppy, but it worked.

Felix shook his head.

"I'm not interested in sparring with Edelgard," Felix said.

Sylvain smiled wryly.

"You'd get your ass kicked, huh?"

"No!" Felix retorted, but he didn't have more defence than that. Sylvain turned the lance again and then changed its direction abruptly to push the tip forward, thrusting in beside Felix's hip. Felix stepped to the side just in case, grabbing the lance by the neck. He held it tight. "I'd just rather spar with you."

"I'll spar on one condition," Sylvain said, and he tugged the lance. Felix did not let go until he had been pulled forward a step. He tugged again until Felix was standing just under his nose and forced to look up. "Go out with me tonight."

"Where?"

"I don't know," Sylvain said. "Let's go into the city. Get dinner, see the opera — you still like music, right? Maybe go to a couple taverns."

"Alright," Felix said.

And then he sucker-punched Sylvain in the gut.

Sylvain gasped but a laugh came out; it hurt, but not the way it would have hurt if Felix had aimed just six inches higher, or if he didn't have more padding than he'd had the last time they sparred. It hurt in the same way that it felt _nice_, knowing that Felix knew exactly where to aim so he wasn't reeling too bad or winded. There was an understanding there. Sylvain drew a deep breath, spread the lance's handle between his hands, and shoved Felix away from him with it. Felix smirked, his eyes growing intense, his posture loose and ready even as he was thrown back. He drew his sword.

Sylvain grinned and moved the lance to his other side.

It would be worth it, for a good night out.

The problem with seeing the opera, however, was looking the part to go.

Sylvain was not troubled at all by the notion of spending a little bit of his remaining money on a night out with his dear friend, particularly a dear friend that he would be leaving behind and not seeing for quite some time. What was a little trickier about it was that neither of them were particularly inclined to spend good money on clothing suitable for the opera, and they weren't likely to get such things at such short notice anyway. Sylvain thought of asking Hubert to loan them some clothes, but Felix refused and Sylvain wasn't sure either of them would fit even if Hubert agreed.

"We don't need to see the opera," Felix said. "Let's just find one of the street shows."

That wasn't exactly the grandiose evening of excess that Sylvain was envisioning to keep himself warm with for the coming months or maybe years he would not be seeing Felix in, but he supposed that he had no problem skipping out on the ludicrous pomp of having to dress a certain way to be allowed in the building. He shrugged it off. A street show it was. Whatever made Felix happy.

But Hubert found them at the gate, and in the moment Hubert approached them, Sylvain was certain he had overheard their debate about raiding his wardrobe. He held his breath until Hubert outright blocked their path to ask:

"Where are you off to?"

Sylvain smiled tightly.

"We're going out," he said.

"I can see that," Hubert intoned, calmly.

"And?" Sylvain asked.

Sylvain gestured for Hubert to make his point.

"I would like to talk to you about Edelgard's request," Hubert said. He glanced between them. Felix just turned on his heel to carry on out the gates, but Sylvain wound a hand into the back of his hood and held him there. Felix stopped.

"Make it quick," Sylvain said. "This little guy's restless."

("Asshole," Felix muttered.)

Hubert paused. It was unlike Hubert to pause, and Sylvain thought that was particularly odd. Sylvain was left with the sneaking suspicion that this was not as simple as it seemed. It had meddling written all over it, just like their encounter at the brothel.

What the end was, however, Sylvain didn't know.

"I assumed she'd call me in to brief me on the details later," Sylvain said, still holding on to Felix, his attention fixed firmly on Hubert. "Why? Are you here to tell me you don't want me to go?"

That was on the forefront of his mind, after all.

"No, no. While I don't think you're the ideal candidate for the mission, I suppose you're the most trustworthy option we have," Hubert said. "As well as the one with the best knowledge and understanding of Fhirdiad castle as it was, during the war."

"I guess so," Sylvain said. "But she doesn't really trust me, does she?"

"Don't take it personally," Hubert advised. "Allowing you to go on her behalf is not a decision undertaken lightly. You should simply see it as an opportunity to prove yourself."

Sylvain frowned.

"So what's the rush?" Sylvain said. "Why are you cornering me at the gates without her here?"

Perhaps Hubert did not expect to be read so openly, as his carefully manicured eyebrows dipped into a frown. Sylvain decided he should tread a little more carefully. He did not like that Hubert lorded information over him or that he used him like a ball in a shuffling-cups trick, but Sylvain did not want to be seen as too clever, either — not when it would just be turned around on him.

"I'd like to request that you don't press Edelgard for information about what's inside," Hubert said. “I don’t think it's your business.”

"I was under the impression we were just going to find out if it still existed or not," Sylvain said, smiling. _We — _whoops. "I’m not looking to make it my business.”

"Of course," Hubert said, and there was a hint of exasperation. "But I know there will be no sating your curiosity, or your penchant for troublemaking."

Sylvain couldn't imagine what the big deal was. A dungeon was a dungeon, as far as he had ever seen or heard, and he had no idea how he was supposed to know whether he'd found it if he couldn't look into it. He couldn't read Hubert's expression, though, and it would be too easy to fall for the barbs. He had to be missing something.

"Just tell me what to do," Sylvain offered.

"Just be cautious," Hubert said, carefully. "I promise that if you do find it, you'll know what it is the moment you see it. The beast walled off the dungeons for a reason; I am sure she found it herself."

That piqued Sylvain's interest, partly because he knew that was not strictly the truth. He almost opened his mouth to say so, but Felix had stopped gently resisting the tug on his hood, and it occurred to Sylvain that perhaps Felix would be turned further from the idea of going if he thought Hubert was lying to them. Felix was not going to play along with anything that felt like manipulation — that was wholly Sylvain's domain.

"Alright," Sylvain said, finally. "Is that it?"

"Just don't go inside," Hubert said, simply.

Sylvain knew, in that moment, that he would. He didn't say as much, though. Instead, he smiled gamely, and he reached and clapped Hubert on the shoulder. Hubert closed his eyes and breathed out a long sigh through his nose, and Sylvain let his hand drop.

"I suppose we'll have a long talk later," Hubert said. "When we have finished making arrangements for the relief army and have a better picture of how your travel and mission fits in."

"Sure," Sylvain agreed. He glanced at Felix, who gave him a warning look.

Hubert turned and walked away without another word. His long black cloak trailed behind him, muddied from dragging on the ground.

Sylvain looked at Felix with a dubious smile.

"You have to be—"

"If you ask me if I'm curious one more time," Felix interrupted, "I'm going to knock your teeth out."

"But my smile is my best feature," Sylvain said.

"Then endeavour to keep it!"

Sylvain sighed and laughed, and he slung an arm around Felix's shoulders. Felix sighed, too, tipping his head back against Sylvain's arm, but his threats were all empty, just words. Sylvain knew it because Felix slipped an arm around his waist in turn, just to squeeze him for a moment, and then they parted and headed on into the city.

It was just starting to rain a little when they reached the marketplace. The rain fell so thinly that Sylvain could scarcely discern any particular raindrop hitting him, as it all just hung on the air, dampening their coats without having the decency to fill anyone's rain-catchers. Sylvain knew the sky was preparing to snow on them, and though snowfall wouldn't stay on the ground in Enbarr for another month or two, he figured Fhirdiad must have already been in the middle of the pre-winter downpours, the city blanketed in cold, heavy rain. With his return to Fhirdiad looming on the horizon, Sylvain felt the sting of familiarity. Sylvain missed the thick clusters of snowflakes the size of down feathers that fell often during the winters up north, and though that snow was dangerous, it had been his home for much of his life. He did not think it would ever feel quite like home again, but he wondered if it would at least feel familiar in a nice way.

He looked at Felix and wondered how Felix weathered winters in Remire, just him alone in a windmill. Few people traveled in winter, at least where they could avoid it, and so the roads would be quiet. Bandits would seek shelter in cities and towns and wait it out until spring. Did Felix get bored, out there all alone in the snow? Was he too busy surviving to think about it?

"What?" Felix asked. "You're staring."

"Do you stay in Remire through the winter?"

"Yes," Felix replied.

"If it's ever a bad winter, you know you could spend it with me."

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" Felix asked. And then: "Where are you going to be, anyway? Fhirdiad?"

"Maybe," Sylvain said. "Depends on how long it takes me. I'll figure that out when the time comes."

Felix shook his head.

"If you're going to wander, then I have to stay in Remire," he said. "Otherwise we'll have no way of finding each other."

Sylvain supposed that was true, but he didn't want to think about it any more. The conversation was much more fun when he was trying to convince Felix to go, rather than ruminating on the reality that he wasn't. He chose instead to ask, pointedly: "Where to, for dinner?"

The answer was obvious to him: it'd be wherever Felix liked. Though Felix was not a particularly picky eater, he was far more likely to voice his dissatisfaction with the little things, and so Sylvain had long learned to just please him for the sake of the tavern masters and their servers. As long as it was not some shitty little fish dish that had him picking bits of tiny bones out of his teeth for the next day, he would be fine. If Felix was happy, Sylvain could be happy, too.

He was pleased when Felix wanted meat pies, which was a far cry from the tables either of them had grown up at but a nostalgic concept nonetheless. Ten years ago, the two of them had occasionally nipped out into the town around Garreg Mach when the Academy's dinner menu didn't please them. Ingrid often joined them, sometimes even after having eaten dinner already, and sometimes Dimitri and Dedue would tag along too. Meat pies sat comfortably with anyone, he thought. Felix conceded to eating in a tavern, too, instead of sitting on a street corner in the mist — Sylvain did not trust that any street-seller had procured his meats from freshly-slaughtered livestock.

With the pies they had cheap cups of white wine. White wine had always been cheap in Enbarr, because it was produced locally and generally only for the church, but with the church of Seiros pushed into austerity, it had begun to appear in taverns as the old vineyards tried to reduce their stores. That was all fine by Sylvain, as it went down smoothly and he rather enjoyed catering to his usually-light coinpurse. The people there were more entertaining, in Sylvain's mind, because they were often travellers and adventurers like him, and everyone had a story to tell. He fit right in. Felix did too, he thought.

And a few cups in, Felix was a little easier on the smiles and a little more sociable. After their pies, they got into an arm-wrestling competition with the men at the next table. Felix and Sylvain took turns rolling up their sleeves and relieving the men of their monies over petty bets, and then they did the same to two more tables. Sylvain even wrestled a girl with arms bigger than his, and though he didn't win against her, Felix did handily — Sylvain cheered them on with a round of drinks, emptying his pockets of any coin he had just won with the previous matches. There was no need to go to any show after all, not when some of the other patrons that evenings were mummers, and with some drinks in them, they were more than happy to put on their masks and act out inebriated versions of the shows they had performed in the streets that very day. Sylvain wasn't sure when he'd last seen Felix laugh so hard. Someone started up songs. The whole tavern bellowed as one, even when their grasp on the lyrics failed them.

The evening passed in a haze after that: Sylvain vaguely recalled being escorted out of the tavern with a couple others as the evening grew late and the crowd grew too rowdy for the tavern master's liking. He found himself out in the streets, standing in a pleasant if not chilly rain, huddled against a bemused Felix and talking with a pair of young women. Then, some time after that, walking back to the palace with one of the girls, Felix somewhere behind, and Sylvain was laughing so loudly at some joke that he scolded by some woman shouting out the window. What felt like moments later: the girl he'd brought back was turned away at the palace gates, and Felix left too — maybe to take the girl back home? — and then he was back, sighing at Sylvain and scolding him for something. Sylvain didn't know what, but he just thought of how pleasant it was to be with Felix, and how handsome he'd looked with his face screwed up in concentration and the lovely tension of his bicep under his rolled sleeve as he'd trounced all their opponents over the tabletop.

Sylvain wasn't sure what happened after that, but come morning, even if he woke up alone and still in his clothes and smelling like throngs of tavern people, he knew it had been a perfect evening.


	17. What Happened After You Left

Edelgard woke early, as she often did. Sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtains, laying a strip of light precisely over her face, and it momentarily blinded her sleep-worn eyes. She blinked against it and sat up, and she felt Hubert shift sleepily into the space she left, as though he insisted upon being closer. Byleth was some feet away in the other direction, curled into the fetal position, her hands clasped together. For a moment, Edelgard admired them both, and then she gently peeled the covers away from her waist to climb out. Sometimes she thought she should sleep on the edge of the bed, always being the first to rise, but selfishly, she preferred to be between them.

She walked to her vanity in the next room, where she could open the curtains without disturbing her partners. She washed up in the waiting basin, the water cool and refreshing, and then sat down at the vanity. She picked up her hairbrush. It was an antique one that had belonged to her mother, and her father’s mother before her. At some point its boar-hair bristles would need to be resewn, meticulously attached one at a time by a skilled artisan, but Edelgard took very good care of it and so she expected it to last a long time.

She stroked it through her hair one hundred times. As a girl she had worn it long and loose nearly to her waist, and with her busy life and strenuous training, both physical and otherwise, she had found one hundred strokes to be enough to keep it in good condition. As a grown woman, she bound it every every day in great twisted buns, both because it was more convenient and because it better hid that it had started to thin, and that cut down on how tangled it could become. She supposed she could have reduced the number of strokes some time ago because of all that, but she never had. Edelgard liked her routine, and how peaceful it was to sit for a moment, tending to her hair.

When the last stroke slipped off the ends of her hair, she set the brush down and began the process of pinning it up. She sectioned it at the back first, tucking it over her shoulders to hold it in place, and began twisting each section into a coil, which she wrapped around a bundle cotton wool so it would appear fuller. She pinned this in place very tightly, and when satisfied with their evenness from side to side, she pinned a delicate white netting overtop it. Sometimes she liked to use red nets instead, and on leisurely days she would go without them entirely. On those days she liked to simply braid her hair back, sometimes with lavender ribbons.

With her hair finished, she powdered her face delicately, darkened her lashes with a kohl pencil, and rose to dress. She untied the ribbon clasping the collar of her long nightdress shut, and the neckline opened wide enough that she could get it over her hair without disturbing it. From her wardrobe she selected a white blouse with a high collar and a keyhole back; as a general rule Edelgard preferred not to show skin, but her back was relatively pristine, and she would put a cloak overtop before leaving their rooms anyway. She dressed in black stockings, red riding breeches and sleek boots, and she buttoned her cuffs with a well-practiced hand. From a drawer in her vanity, she looked amongst her glove collection; she had many from which to choose, but many of them had yet to be altered to have small slits through which to reveal her wedding rings, which she was too proud of to hide away. She eventually chose white cotton gloves to wear at that moment, and red leather gloves for later. She tucked the red ones in her pocket and pulled on the white ones, taking a moment to ensure the well-tapered fingers sat just so on her hands.

Then, she thought, she was ready for an early morning ride.

“Would you like some company?” Hubert intoned from the couch, where he had been for some time. Edelgard did not know how long; it didn’t really matter to her, as his presence was so ubiquitous that she never longed to be alone.

“If you won’t take long getting ready,” she said, pulling on her cloak, and then she was ready to go out the door.

She smiled when she turned and found him lounging completely naked. He smirked at her as he relaxed against the arm of the couch, his cheek on his hand, his body a pale expanse of sleek, efficient muscle and purpled bruises from lovemaking.

“Of course, you always take twice as long as me,” she told him. “So I’m going now.”

But she lingered, eyes roving up and down him again. He made an amused sound, a lovely, dark rumble at the base of his throat that had her pausing by the door, her gloved fingertips resting against the handle. He lounged a moment longer, and then, achingly slow, sat up.

“Then why are you just standing there staring at me?” Hubert asked. “Is there perhaps something distracting you?”

Edelgard laughed, just a single, exasperated, entertained, _loving_ sound.

“I suppose I could wait,” she said.

Edelgard was, by her own admission, not a particularly skilled rider.

For the most part, people did not tell her so. She often imagined that if she lived a small village life, no one would bat an eye when she did little things like let the bit fall against the horse’s teeth, or misunderstand how to maneuver the creature over certain terrains. As an experienced military leader, however, she had surrounded herself with people who knew horses about as well as they knew humans, sometimes even better. She knew when she mounted a horse, people would quietly bite their tongues and avert their eyes, and she did not like it when people felt unable to critique her.

For that reason, she tended to travel by carriage, and she made her military addresses on foot, and she only went riding for pleasure at daybreak on private grounds. The Imperial stables kept a pleasant little horse with a patient temperament for her, and once every few weeks, when she had a free moment, Edelgard would ride, just for the joy of it.

It was important, she felt, to have hobbies.

She felt glad, on that particular morning, to have pinned her hair so tightly. The morning breeze was cool and stiff, and she had a feeling her cheeks were bright pink as she and Hubert raced across the gentle rolling hills. As they reached the end of the field, approaching the back wall of the palace, Edelgard reined in her horse and slowed to a stop. Her heart pounded, but it felt thrilling.

Hubert stopped perhaps fifty feet later, as his great black horse tossed its head and refused to slow. Edelgard smiled watching him turn the creature around and get it back around to rejoin with her.

“Aren’t we a pair?” she said. “I thought you might hit the wall.”

Hubert gave an unamused noise, but he did not fuss.

“You’re in good spirits this morning,” he said.

“I am.”

Hubert nodded, and for a moment they were quiet. He dismounted his horse, perhaps knowing full well he would struggle to get back on, and Edelgard sighed and looked down at him.

“If they do find the dungeon quarters in Fhirdiad Castle,” Hubert said, “do you still intend to go?”

“Yes,” Edelgard said, without hesitation. “I do.”

Hubert sighed and looked up at her. Generally, she and Hubert agreed on most things, even when one of them didn’t want to. They were both highly dedicated people, and tended to sacrifice their own opinions and feelings for what was the most appropriate course of action. As Emperor and Minister of the Imperial Household, disagreements were undertaken with a deep, unshakable respect for their offices, and laid aside peacefully just as quickly.

But as husband and wife, the temptation to protect each other could be vicious.

“I do not think that is a good idea,” he said.

“Are you afraid that you will see something in me you do not wish to see?” she asked.

“No,” Hubert said. “I do not think there is even an ounce of darkness in your soul that I could not bear. I am simply afraid for you.”

Edelgard was not sure she had ever heard Hubert say such a thing — that he was afraid, much less afraid for her, and she knew he was genuine about it, for Hubert never trifled when it came to matters like these. She shifted a little in the saddle, looking down at him and his stern face, and she gestured for him to come to her. He lingered by his horse.

“Hubert.”

“I hope you do not take it lightly when I say that,” he said. “That I am afraid for you, Edelgard.”

“Come here,” she said. She reached for him.

Hubert walked to her, stalking through the grass with his eyes low. He was tall enough that she did not have to bend to reach for his face, and she took his cheeks between her hands and stroked his face with her thumbs. He sighed, closing his eyes, and for a moment she just pet him.

“I’m afraid, too,” she admitted. “I have many things now that I did not have years ago. But it must be done.”

He settled between her hands, exhaling deeply, and she felt him lean in to her and her horse. She stooped in the saddle, the leather creaking under her as she bent down enough to kiss his forehead. His hair was cool from the fall air, but his scalp was warm, and she breathed him in as she held him.

“I know,” he said. “And you will go.” He opened his eyes, fixing her with that piercing gaze. “I hope I did not spoil your good mood.”

“No,” she said, and she let him go to straighten up. He lingered in her reach. “You couldn’t spoil my mood even if you tried. But you must be brave. If I think you doubt my resolve, then I will begin to doubt it myself.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. But as your husband...”

He spanned a hand up her thigh, bracing, as if to remind her of his physical presence, and the strength of his touch. His desire to be with her.

“I want you to reconsider. You don’t need to chase ghosts.”

“Need to?” she repeated. “No. _Want_ to. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days wondering. I may not have a lot of time. And if Linhardt can do something about it…”

She trailed. Hubert shook his head.

“If you have so little time, then I don’t want you to spend the rest of it in an even worse state,” he said, his voice growing a little more insistent. “Edelgard. We’ve destroyed those that slither in the dark. Byleth did not lend you her strength so you could immediately throw yourself into what could destroy you.”

“Byleth wants me to pursue what will make me happy,” she replied, curtly.

“Byleth will not argue with you, and so the task falls to me,” Hubert said. He gripped her knee, then, so firmly that she looked down at him with furrowed brows. “My dear, please. I would not ask you to reconsider if I didn’t think the risk was too much. I have never had so much to lose.”

Edelgard watched him, her jaw tensed. She put a hand to her chest for a moment, breathing deeply and feeling her own breast rise and fall, and Hubert watched her quietly. When she felt calm, she let him reach to her and take her gloved hand between his, and he kissed the back of it once, and then held her hand to his face. Edelgard sat there in silence, grateful for his affection. Her horse shivered under her, Hubert leant up against the mare’s side.

“I know,” she said, finally, and he looked up at her. “I’m... sorry, to have caused you both so much trouble.” She sighed. “Perhaps... perhaps we should lay the topic to rest entirely until Sylvain sends news. If it really has been destroyed, then there will have been no point to any further discussion.”

Hubert nodded.

“Very well,” he said. She could feel his disappointment; she knew he didn’t like to rely on hope, but it was all she could give him. It was out of her hands. “But on the condition that you continue to appeal to Felix. I don’t trust Sylvain will do it, and Felix has always served you well.”

Edelgard did not think he was wrong, but she did not know if it was possible to convince Felix.

She didn’t have long, but she had to try.

Edelgard left her horse to the stables, and Hubert to a morning of household orchestrations. On mornings where Byleth slept until early afternoon, Edelgard would often spend it the morning at her bedside, going through paperwork and contemplating proposals and law amendments, and on mornings where Byleth stirred, Edelgard would lay with her and they would talk a while.

But on that particular morning, Edelgard could only sigh as she passed the stairs up to the Imperial household, and hope that Byleth would sleep the morning through and not miss her presence. She continued up the halls, through into the guest quarters, and knocked on the second door.

A maid answered. She seemed startled at first, realizing just who had come to call, but she recovered quickly, bowed, and fixed Edelgard with an apologetic though sunny smile.

“Is Felix here?” Edelgard asked, though she had already guessed the answer.

“He left an hour ago, Your Majesty,” she said, smoothing the front of her apron as she spoke.

“Left?” Edelgard repeated.

“Oh,” the maid said. “No, his things are still here. I think he just went into the city for the day.”

“That’s good to hear,” Edelgard replied. She glanced down the hall, back to the first door. She pondered it a moment, and found the maid watching her attentively. “Is Sylvain still there?”

“I don't believe so, Your Majesty. I suppose he’s out for the day as well,_ thankfully!_”

Edelgard wasn’t sure that she’d ever seen a maid respond to her so flippantly in her whole life, but it was oddly refreshing, particularly where Sylvain was involved.

“Has he been causing trouble to you?”

“He was _so_ charming at first,” the maid replied, “but now several of the girls are upset, some of them at each other, because of his...” She smiled tightly. “_Indiscretions_. Count Vestra has already spoken to both Margrave Gautier and the rest of the serving staff, but the problem persists. Women, men — he’s insatiable, and the morons keep falling for him. He’s just so charming!”

“I see,” Edelgard replied. The girl's bubbliness made her feel old and tired by comparison, even if she was still fairly young herself. “I’m afraid that particular problem persists wherever Sylvain goes.”

But Edelgard smiled a touch, guessing the maid could not be a day older than eighteen. When she was that age, she and Hubert were spending an inordinate amount of time each week chasing Sylvain out of places he shouldn’t be. The library, storerooms, the greenhouse, the cozier nooks in the hallways. The girls’ dormitory rooms after hours tended to be the most notable place; keeping the girls out of his had tapered off with Dimitri's assistance, at least.

Some things never changed.

“You will say something, of course, if his behaviour ever goes from indiscreet to disreputable?” Edelgard asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty!” the maid sighed. “I almost wish he would try something with me, just so I could get him in trouble for it — I’m just so tired of the drama!”

Edelgard sensed the conversation wasn’t going to go much further than that, so she just smiled and nodded.

“Understandable,” she said. She turned to go, and the maid bowed again curtly and closed the door.

It seemed a terrible idea to Edelgard to visit Sylvain’s door to ask about Felix, but she approached the door anyway. She raised her hand to knock, but before her knuckles could meet the fine wood, she had a thought. She walked back to Felix’s room and opened the door.

And there was Sylvain with the maid. Fortunately Edelgard had not been gone long enough for anything too regrettable to develop, but Sylvain's speedy hands had the maid bent over over the writing desk, her skirts flipped up and a hand on her thigh. Sylvain muttered something in her ear and she squealed with laughter, and then abruptly stopped; both of them turned to look at Edelgard in the doorway, and Edelgard pointed down the hall.

“Out,” she ordered.

Sylvain let the maid go, and she put her skirts back down. The maid looked up at Sylvain, and he reached over and scooted her towards the door with a hand on her bottom. Edelgard touched a hand to her temple, now growing annoyed, and waited for the maid to slink by her and out, down the hall.

For a moment Edelgard said nothing, preferring to watch Sylvain squirm. His bravado dissipated quite quickly once he didn’t have a girl to posture for, and for once, Edelgard relished how much she intimidated him. It was harmless, for something so stupid.

“Hey,” Sylvain said, finally, and he got that look in his eye, as though he were an abandoned puppy. He liked to think he was so cute, but those _heys_ could only rustle the skirts of women with easy or curious natures. To Edelgard, they felt as foolish as if he’d greeted her wearing a clown costume.

“This isn’t your room,” Edelgard said. "And you've been told _several_ times to leave the staff alone."

“I guess I got turned around in these big hallways,” he said, scrubbing at his hair with a hand. His boyish grin grew sheepish. “I don’t suppose you still report these incidents to the Professor so she can issue me a detention, huh?”

“No,” she said, “But if you tell me where Felix is, I won’t have Hubert move you to the stables with the other animals.”

Sylvain laughed.

“Deal!” he said, very quickly. “He went to the market. He’s looking for some stuff to take back to Remire — whetstones, some spices, a good pair of boots, that kind of stuff. You’re not in a hurry, are you?"

“Not particularly,” Edelgard said. She gave him a good stern look as she beckoned him to follow her. “You’ll be departing soon, Sylvain. You can manage to leave the maids alone for another few days, can’t you?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and he slunk at her heels.

She felt tempted to lecture him further, but she bit her tongue. Lecturing Sylvain tended to be a waste of breath, and though she felt she had done a great deal of work to repair their relationship, there was only so much she could do if he wasn’t going to meet her half-way. All this nonsense with the maids, and the drinking, and the absconding, and the lazing about — Edelgard knew that Hubert had good reason to place little hope in Sylvain, but it was all so frustrating to her. She'd seen what promise he had. Was he just going to carry on like that _forever?_

No one could change him but himself.

“Hey, Edelgard?” Sylvain said as she closed Felix’s door behind them. His voice had softened a little, and he leaned into her space as if he might be able to butter her up just by being close.

“Yes?”

She looked up at him. The puppy eyes were gone. Instead, he just looked nervous.

“You’re looking for Felix so you can convince him to go with me, right? You really think he’ll agree?”

“I intend to speak with him,” she said. “Whether he will go is another matter.”

“True,” he agreed. “I just... I’ve been meaning to talk to him about some stuff, but I just haven’t found the right time yet. When you talk to him, you won’t tell him, will you? About, uh...”

He trailed, and he looked like there was something more he wanted to specify, but instead he just smiled. She didn’t press him, even though she thought she could. He seemed much too fragile to tolerate her putting a fine point on it.

Instead, she said: “I’ll see you at dinner, Sylvain. Please respect the maids in the meantime; you must stop treating them as playthings if you hope to be a better man.”

He didn’t say anything, but he gave her a guilty look as she turned away from him. She left him in the hall and made her way back across the palace. She had meetings to attend to, all of them to do with final preparations and approvals for the mission to Fhirdiad, and with any luck, she could speak with Felix alone before their departure.

Somehow, she imagined she’d be spending all of that time just trying to track him down.

The problem with Felix was that he could not be easily approached; he consistently refused requests to meet again, citing their first and only meeting. Edelgard could not take him to dinner or a show or shopping either, so he took offers made out of kindness as bribery. Getting him alone was an arduous task, because wherever he went, Sylvain was likely to turn up.

As Emperor, she simply did not have time in her day to endlessly chase a lone man around, but being Emperor was what made it difficult to enforce a meeting — not only because she did not want to exercise her power that way, but also because Felix was particularly stubborn around authority. She was the moon, and he was the tide running up on the land to get away from her.

It was a highly annoying predicament, but she persisted. After all, she still believed he had an important role to play in Fódlan’s future, and in transforming the former kingdom of Faerghus into a prosperous land that could stand alone once more.

But she also knew Felix had deep reservations about her understanding of Faerghus and its people, perhaps Sylvain in particular.

As a general principle, Edelgard tried not to take such things personally. It was normal, after all, for those in leadership positions to have to make difficult decisions sometimes, and in war, compromise was not always possible. She had learned to expect disagreement, and though she had historically had mixed success in trying to change people’s minds once they were set, she had always had great success in cultivating a circle of wise, pragmatic and just people to surround herself with. As a girl she had often been forced to work with people who did not share her ideals, but at least they had the barest scraps of common ground to meet upon. As a woman, she no longer trifled with people who were truly different from her. Work could only be accomplished on common ground.

That was why it stung, sometimes, when people like Felix pointed at the shared ground below their feet and did not seem to understand how they had come to be there. It stung worse when they accused her of putting them there by force.

She still believed very strongly that they shared the same vision.

When she finally managed to find Felix that evening, as he returned to the palace at sundown, he gave her one of those very looks, like he had been brought there against his will. He was once more dressed in his fur cloak and rugged woodsman clothing, no doubt what he felt most comfortable in, and at once he seemed as though he belonged where she wanted him to be: more North, where the season was already appropriate for furs, and where the land demanded hard work from people who loved it. She stood at the top of the stairs, her skirt blowing in the breeze, a few long, loose strands of her hair caught on the wind. He looked up at her with furrowed brows.

“Felix,” she said. “I was hoping we could talk.”

“We already did,” he said, taking the last few steps up to her. He stood in front of her for a moment, rocking his weight between his feet as though deciding which way to go around her. She stood still, lifting her chin.

All she could do was lay her cards on the table. Nothing else was going to get through to him.

“It’s about Sylvain,” she said.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and he didn’t reply for a moment, just watching her. Edelgard held his gaze. She knew his presence in Enbarr could largely be chalked up to his dedication to Sylvain, but she had always felt he respected her. Respect, she knew, was very different from trust.

“Fine,” he said, finally.

“You realize,” she told him, as she let him into her office, “that you make the task of getting you alone an incredibly arduous experience.”

He smiled at that, and though it was terse and unfriendly, it was a smile nonetheless.

“I like being alone. I just didn’t have anything more to say to you.”

“I noticed,” she replied. She gestured for him to sit across from her at her desk, and he just stood there. Edelgard wasn’t about to stand there until he did, so she swept across the room to one of the cabinets, and she took out her tea set. She set up cups for them, doling out little scoops of loose tea, and as she placed his on a saucer, he made a scoffing sound.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m not staying that long.”

She knew he was being deliberately obtuse with her, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of an argument.

“Sit,” she ordered.

For a moment he tried to wait her out, but she stood on her side of the desk and watched him. He lifted his chin and stared her down, but when Edelgard had stood there long enough to make her point, he folded. He sat, and he made an annoying little show of it, flipping out his coat tails so he wouldn’t sit on them, dropping himself into his chair.

“Sylvain not good enough for you?” he asked.

“That’s not very kind,” she said, taking her own seat. On cue, a maid slipped in through the back door with a steaming teapot, and she placed it on the desk, curtsied and then left again. Edelgard didn’t pour it just yet. She continued: “I’m grateful for his offer, of course, but I’m not convinced it’s the best choice for any of us.”

“He’s not as good as me,” Felix said, as though they were agreeing on something, “but he will do it. I don’t understand why that’s not enough for you.”

“Because Sylvain doesn’t have a clue about what is going on in Fhirdiad,” Edelgard said. Felix frowned. “You must have realized that by now, hadn’t you? Sylvain scarcely knew what was happening in _Enbarr_. I don’t get the impression he even knows what he signed up for in Fhirdiad. But you know, don't you?”

Felix looked straight ahead of him for a moment, and then he dropped his eyes to the desk.

“Fhirdiad is a disaster,” he said.

Edelgard nodded.

“It’s been difficult for the people there to rebuild,” Edelgard said. “We’ve had a military presence there since the war, of course, to ensure their safety and see to the city’s operations, but the fire destroyed so much of the city. Even with rebuilding cities are fed by countrysides, and much of Faerghus languished long before we took control of it. ”

“I _know_,” Felix said. “They starved under Duke Rufus, they starved under the Church and Dimitri, and now they starve under you.”

Edelgard nodded tightly. She got the impression that he knew a great deal more than he’d say, and so she just gestured for him to continue.

“Am I supposed to explain what you’re doing wrong?” he asked, with a scoff. “Or do _you_ not know what’s going on in Faerghus?”

Edelgard wasn’t sure if she preferred Felix’s prickliness or Sylvain’s tendency to make everything a joke. Defensive strategies undertaken unintentionally were often the most difficult to work with, and she did not appreciate it from people who had once jumped at the chance to make a difference with her. She refused to believe their ideals were any different now from what they were then — they were simply cracked men in need of mending.

“I do not _want_ to sit here and explain things to you that you already know,” Edelgard said, with a fine point to her voice. “I have no desire to frustrate you, Felix, but I must know that we are on the same page, and then I can make my point.”

Felix leaned back in his seat, arms folded. For a moment he considered her, and then he said: “I like Almyrian pine needles.”

Edelgard bit back a sigh, and then allowed herself an exasperated smile, which she fixed on him as she picked up the tea pot and poured.

“I know,” she said, in a tone where she could have easily added _you brat_ to the end. “That’s why I brought it.”

He gave a quiet, pleased hum. She just set the teapot back down and gently pushed his teacup and saucer across the desk to him. He took it between his hands and inhaled deeply, though it surely needed a few minutes to brew.

“The people of Faerghus don’t like you,” Felix said, and though he seemed to enjoy saying it, the attitude had softened, somewhat. “Even if you’re better for them than any rule they’ve had in the past fifteen years, most people don’t like to think their own king abandoned them, or that the church they followed taxed them to starvation and threw their bodies at enemy lines.”

“Understandably,” Edelgard said. “They barely coexist with my army.”

“They tolerate it because your army is keeping the place together,” Felix said. “For now, at least.”

Soldiers, when not at war, operated as a highly trained and mobile task force. The army dug wells, built latrines, erected shelter, organized supplies, established rules and enforced safety. But an army could never replace community, especially when they could be accused — rightly so — of being foreigners.

“And your real problem is that the refugees streaming into Fhirdiad are bringing cholera outbreaks with them,” Felix said. “At least, when the afflicted manage to get that far without dying. The spread will slow down over the coming winter, but people will still die of it, and by spring...”

He didn’t seem to want to say it.

“You've always denied being interested in politics,” Edelgard said. "And yet, despite cutting yourself off from us, you know exactly what we are up against."

Felix shook his head.

“What _you’re _up against,” he corrected her. “There’s nothing I can do for Fhirdiad. I’m not a doctor, or an engineer, or a priest.”

“What do you do, then, Felix?”

“I kill people,” he said.

“You ought not to trivialize what you do,” Edelgard replied. “I understand that you’ve been haunting the roads in Oghma and routing out opportunists that prey on the refugees, protecting their fragile lives. I don’t see why you should refuse to see that as an honourable thing.”

“And that’s why you want me, right,” Felix said. “I’m not selfish like Sylvain.”

“Well, yes,” Edelgard replied. Felix looked at her as though he hadn’t expected her to be so honest with him, and it stung a little to be judged for something he had said himself. “I’m glad that he’s interested in the changes in Fódlan and wants to discover them more, but we have a little less than four months to prepare the city and its people to avoid a massive outbreak in the spring. I don’t think he could commit to a task that daunting.”

“And I’m so reliable?”

Edelgard could have laughed.

“Yes,” she said, pointedly. “Certainly. You may be rude and argumentative, but you’ve never once failed me.”

He didn’t reply to that. He just sat back in his seat, his teacup cradled between his hands. He looked a little boyish for a moment, his gaze fixed somewhere off to the side as he thought about it.

“I did, though,” he said. He sounded a little bitter at that. A little vulnerable.

“It is not failure to lack control over the actions of others,” Edelgard replied. “You didn’t fail me. Dimitri did.”

“I'm less concerned about him and more concerned about Sylvain.”

She didn’t feel too differently from that, but she knew there was little point in dwelling on the subject.

“Let me put it this way, then,” she said. “Sylvain is fragile. Much more fragile than he lets on, even, but he does want to do good. If there is no other, I am prepared to take a risk on him, but I truly believe you are much better equipped to handle Fhirdiad. Or, at the very least, he would handle it much better with your support.”

Felix chewed on that for a moment, and finally he shook his head.

“You should know better than to misjudge him like that, especially after Fhirdiad.”

Edelgard pursed her lips. It bothered her, sometimes, to see people put on the song and dance of denial. It seemed as plain to her as day that Sylvain was not prepared for the task, and she couldn’t understand why Felix would let his friendship blind him to the reality of it. Someone was going to get hurt that way, and she loathed the idea of burying either of them.

“He did endure his time in Fhirdiad remarkably well,” Edelgard agreed. “And I still feel strongly that his actions aided Dimitri, and brought him some comfort up until the end. But I shouldn’t have allowed him to remain with Dimitri for as long as he did — and I don’t believe we should measure his strength by what he endured in the past.”

“Are you saying he’s gotten weak?”

“Hasn’t he?” Edelgard asked.

Felix sighed.

“I won’t pretend to be privy to your long friendship,” she said, finally. “Perhaps in some small way I _have_ misjudged him, and for his sake, I hope that I have. But you’ve been gone for a long time, Felix. I know he hasn’t told you what you missed.”

For a long moment, Felix stared at his teacup, and then he set it down, leaving his fingertips poised on the edge of her desk. It seemed to Edelgard that Felix existed in a strange space where he suspected enough to be wary, if not curious, but feared the truth enough to not prod.

“He hasn’t,” Felix said. “But I have an idea, just from the past few weeks. I’d like you to tell me.”

“Very well,” she said. “Sylvain _has_ struggled these past number of years. Largely with what happened in Fhirdiad, but he fell very deeply into his vices. Women, drinking.”

He drew a sharp breath, and then let it out just as quickly.

“I did guess that,” he said. “We cleared out a bandit camp and he thought to take wine before food. The whole journey here I was fishing him out of taverns, and everything at House Aegir…”

He trailed, giving a frustrated wave of his hand.

“I suspect he is a little more cavalier around you, but he does try to hide it around us,” Edelgard said, "Hubert and I think he's moved around the past few years because people wise up to his behaviour. When Hubert found him at the most recent brothel, he spoke with the owner and gathered that they weren’t very impressed with him.”

Felix’s jaw set a little tighter. For a moment he didn’t say anything, and Edelgard could see the disappointment percolating at the back of his throat. She felt it, too, and it made her sore to think that someone with so much potential and with so much innate talent and passion would use it only to dig himself deeper into the ground. It was even more disappointing to think that he wouldn’t even tell his dearest ones where he was going.

Finally, Felix asked: "Is that what happened with Gautier?"

“In a sense. That was the absolute worst of it. His father died and he was still the named heir. We helped him best we could from afar, but the distance was too much. We couldn’t protect him from himself, or protect Gautier from him.”

“And then he sold Gautier to Ingrid,” Felix said. And then he added, a little tersely: “On your request, I'm sure. I can't imagine she had the money.”

“Not far from the truth,” Edelgard said. “In those days, he would have traded Gautier away for a decent hand of cards and some rum, so when Ingrid came to me saying he was thinking of it, I had to ensure they were not turned over to some rebel or church loyalist. In those days there were a lot more of them. Even so, Sylvain’s antics put the land in great debt, and he drove away a lot of people who might have stayed to help it recover after the war. I had to call in a number of favours just to keep the border secure.”

“Mm,” Felix hummed. “And Sylvain just started… wandering?”

Edelgard felt herself grimace, almost reluctantly. Felix looked away.

“Not quite. After much discussion between myself and Ingrid, he was brought back to Enbarr. It was the last thing he wanted, but we felt it necessary — we were _all_ worried we would lose him entirely. We convinced him to stay, and for about a year, we took care of him. It was...” She paused. She thought of the kindest way she could put it. “_Difficult_, to say the least. But he sobered up, and for a time, he even seemed to enjoy being here.”

Those had been peculiar days. Edelgard didn’t let herself reminisce on them much; though they were peppered with enough happy moments to not let them go, they felt soured somewhat by the way he’d left them. She pushed it all away, choosing instead to watch Felix shake his head. She could see it all settling on him too comfortably, confirming small suspicions he must have had nursing through the past few weeks.

"Then some lords of the former Kingdom requested he be tried for treason. I denied them, of course, but he simply wasn’t ready to confront what had happened in Faerghus.”

Edelgard sighed.

“He's never been as terrible as he was when Hubert first brought him back to us, but he's still far from the man he used to be. Just a little better at hiding it.”

Felix frowned.

“He had an altercation with Dorothea, when we were at House Aegir,” Felix said. “She said when he left here last, he had an incident of some sort. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. But I thought it sounded a lot like...”

He fixed her with a look.

“It was, in a way,” she said. “My experiences with Dimitri’s outbursts were very limited compared to yours, of course... but I imagined it would be difficult to spend so much time around him and not adopt his habits.”

Edelgard had noticed Sylvain’s tendency to treat her as though she were the same as Dimitri, and the variety of other habitual tics he’d returned from Fhirdiad with. While Felix had Dimitri’s shaggy hair and shabby clothes, as well as his desire to sequester himself away, Sylvain had his temper and his desire to be liked in equal measure, and a generous helping of his paranoia, too. It was odd: it made Edelgard feel as though she’d sent two men to war and gotten back two men wearing a third, squabbling with each other over who held the bulk of the weight.

At least she had them back now. For a number of years, they’d _both_ felt lost.

Felix ran a finger over the handle of his teacup, gazing into his tea as though it might hold answers.

“I guess so,” he said. “I don’t want to think about being like him at all, but it’s true.”

“You seem to have escaped the worst of it,” she said, and she felt confident about that. “Out of all the death and self-destruction, living in the woods as a guardian to the roads is rather adjusted, don’t you think?”

Felix scoffed and drank. She thought she saw a smile peeking around the rim of his teacup.

“You’re right,” Felix said. “I am very adjusted.”

Edelgard smiled, though she did not feel amused at all.

“I know nobody believes me when I say I have closure,” Felix added. “That’s fine. I don’t need anyone’s approval on it. But you can’t seriously believe that just having a dagger will give you that, either.”

Edelgard sat back in her seat and sighed, her smile lingering.

“No,” Edelgard said. “Of course not. But symbols are powerful. I would sleep better knowing I had it back. Or knowing that those secret quarters were not just sealed away, but completely destroyed.”

She shook her head. The contents, too, were another matter entirely, but she had other people to handle that.

“Of course, none of this is to say you should go,” she said. “I am being honest with you when I say I don’t see a point in trying to convince you of anything.”

“You just _want_ me to go,” Felix said. "And if you don't convince me, then it's my idea."

“I have no interest in working with people who feel they've had no choice in the matter,” she said. “And I feel you are still a man who prizes justice, and I don’t think protecting a strip of road is enough for you. I think if you see Fhirdiad, you’ll find meaning there, too. The people need good leaders like you, who will put their interests first.”

“And Sylvain won’t?”

“I know he’s a good man,” she said. “But I think he will get there, see Ingrid, and flee. He’s always trying to run away or make it up to me in turns, too. I hope I’m wrong, but he’s just not ready.”

“And why would I change anything?”

Felix didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“You are very dear to him,” she said. That, of all things, was something she shouldn’t have had to explain. “He would endure it at your side, even _for_ you.”

He pushed his tea away from him entirely, so far that he pushed it right up against her teacup. They clinked together softly. Felix stood up and bowed curtly.

“Thank you,” he said, “I have a lot to think about.”

He left without another word, and Edelgard sat there in silence, feeling frustrated at him, at Sylvain, at herself — most of all, herself. For a moment she chose to sit with her face in her hands while she composed herself.

When she felt a little better, she sat up straighter and pulled a small mirror from the left-hand desk drawer, and checked that she did not look too bothered before going back into court and seeing people who would feel nervous around her. Her hair had developed some flyaways since morning, but she knew they were small enough that only she would notice.

They bothered her anyway.

When she returned to her quarters that evening, no one greeted her at the door. That was not particularly surprising to her, as she knew where her partners were: she followed the sounds of quiet lovemaking through the lounge area and right to the bedroom door. She looked in to see Hubert and Byleth laid up in bed, bodies tight together and writhing. Edelgard lingered at the doorway without a word, fingertips on each side of the doorframe. 

She pondered what she’d seen earlier with Sylvain and the maid, and she pursed her lips. She did not feel like joining them, and she knew they would stop to console her if they noticed her sullen mood, so she went back into the lounge and sat at the writing desk. She wondered if she’d done the right thing, telling Felix what Sylvain had hoped to conceal, but she supposed it did not matter. He would have found out in time anyway.

On the other hand, she knew Felix would not remain quiet for long. He would speak to Sylvain eventually. Edelgard pondered the potential timing of it. She supposed if it happened within the walls of Enbarr, she would be speaking to Sylvain again soon.

He would likely be upset with her, and that never boded well, either.

Her heart hurt as though it was labouring to spread her bloods about her veins, and she felt as drained of joy as her day had been, but still, she persisted. She had more to do, and more to prepare for. She pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer and loaded her dip pen with ink.

_Dear Ingrid,_ she wrote, _I hope you are well, and that the news I bear does not trouble you. Sylvain and Felix..._

Edelgard let her heart guide the rest, and then she dozed off, scarcely waking when someone carried her to bed after.


	18. Revolution

Sylvain had never felt so terrible in his life.

It seemed trite to even think about it now, but about twelve hours ago, he would have described the night of the anniversary dance as the worst he’d ever felt. It was his own fault, of course. He’d _appropriated_ a handle of rum from Seteth’s office — his own, actually, confiscated the week prior — and hidden away in the green house with Dorothea and Hilda and gotten wildly, _disgustingly_ drunk. The kind of drunk that started out fun and ended with someone (him) puking his guts out while someone else (Hilda), also drunk, laughed at him, until the most sober person in their party (Dorothea) had to help him back to his room, only for all three of them to get caught and lectured _and_ assigned detention. He’d spent the next morning shovelling wet snow from the courtyard with a punishing hangover. It was a lot, from someone who had grown up with the childhood he'd had, but the freshest memories tended to be the worst ones.

After all, that was only three months prior. His childhood might as well have been another lifetime. In the present moment, crammed between Annette and the back wall of a military carriage that shook and rocked with every bump or puddle in the road, he would have given literally anything for the relative privilege of shovelling snow with a hangover.

The carriage was large, but they had more students to move than carriage space to fit them, so they were crammed in quite tightly on two benches, and then even more were huddled on the narrow floor space between them. Though they could easily face each other, both rows sat with their heads hung and eyes low. Sylvain wasn’t sure if he was happy or upset to have the back corner. He was mashed up against fewer people, but if they were attacked, he’d be so deep in the carriage that he’d be unable to stand and fight.

Either way, it beat being one of the poor souls riding. If he lifted the corner of the carriage’s canvas cover, he could see a few mounted soldiers, shivering as they rode through the pouring rain. He could have been one of them, but when the carriages had pulled up to evacuate them, they’d been ferried inside with little question as to who was going where.

“I’m going to be sick,” Annette said, a sob on her voice, but she refused to let even a single tear fall. He didn’t feel much differently. “I really will...”

“Annette,” he murmured, and he shifted to put an arm around her. She tucked right in against his side, and he clasped her to him. “Breathe. Big breaths.”

She nodded furiously. He wondered if she had regrets. Sylvain looked between his friends to see if they did, either. Felix and Ingrid both looked ill as well, and it was seeing the unease on their faces that made him suddenly feel nauseous too.

“I can’t believe this,” Ingrid said. "Our families…"

“Don’t,” Felix cut her off. “Don’t talk about it.”

“We have to talk about it, Dimitri—“

“I _said_ don’t talk about it,” Felix_ s_napped. “You’re just going to upset yourself and everyone here.”

Ingrid shut up, but she didn’t look happy about it. She pushed herself to her feet, stooped and crawled down the narrow aisle to the other end of the cart, and she squeezed herself into the very narrow space there. Some students shuffled down along the bench to make more space. She put her face in her hands and folded right in two, between her knees. Sylvain felt like putting his foot right into Felix’s teeth for being such a prick. He felt pissed off that they were too crammed in for him to go to Ingrid and comfort her.

“Felix, I get it,” Sylvain said, as patiently as he could. “But we’re going to have to talk about it. We just... we _just_...”

He struggled to say it, too. He looked down the aisle of students; most of them politely looked away, but he could tell they were listening. Most of them were from the Empire to begin with, but he thought he recognized at least a couple students from the Kingdom and the Alliance. They, too, would be questioning their future.

“We turned on the church,” Annette said. There was a mix of horror and awe in her voice. “I can’t believe we did that. We actually did that. Our families… they'll find out soon."

“We did that,” Sylvain agreed.

“We’re all going to be disowned,” Felix said. He sounded like he didn’t know what to make of that. Sylvain recalled his suggestion that he would abdicate and he knew that even Felix’s gut would churn at the prospect of losing his agency in that matter. “The boar is never going to speak to us again. We’re never going to step foot in Faerghus again, unless it’s to be tried and executed.”

All the heads in the carriage turned. Eyes rounded, and bodies tensed.

“Don’t say that,” Sylvain scolded him. “You’re scaring everyone.”

Felix shook his head.

“We’re his friends,” Sylvain insisted. “We were sparring just yesterday, we had lunch together—“

“Yeah, his friends who absconded with the Black Eagles on a crusade against the most powerful institution in Fódlan’s history,” Ingrid said. She said it like she was trying to convince herself. Sylvain wondered if her knightly virtues belonged to king or country or tradition. “I don’t know, Sylvain. It really depends on who tells him what happened in the crypt.”

“It doesn’t matter who tells him,” Felix said, quietly. “It’s over.”

“He’s not unreasonable,” Sylvain argued. “He’s never been the most pious supporter of the church, and we’re his best friends. You saw the... the _Immaculate_ One. If we could talk to him, maybe he’d...”

He trailed. He had an idea, suddenly. It hit his mind so quickly that he felt like he’d been jolted, and he struggled to put it into words, into a pitch. Ingrid, Felix and Annette looked at him with various levels of concern, as did a number of the other students. Sylvain shifted to the edge of his seat, hands in front of him in the cramped space to try to gesture out his thoughts. He struggled.

And then:

“What if we went back and explained it to him? What if we took him with us?”

“That’s insane,” Felix said. "He'd never come with us. What kind of Faerghus king turns against the Church?"

“We’d never even see him,” Ingrid said. “We wouldn’t get within an hour of that place without getting captured. We’re already deserters.”

“We’re nobility,” Sylvain said. “We have power. It might not be pretty, but all we’d have to do is say that we didn’t have a choice but we came back anyway, and we could just... speak up for ourselves, and get to him. Convince him to turn against the Church, too.”

“You're delusional,” Felix said. “He is not going to turn against the church.”

Felix dropped his gaze, and Sylvain saw him tense up, despite already being in the claustrophobic row of students. But it was his tone that really bothered Sylvain; while he was used to Felix’s doom and gloom, something about Felix’s voice sounded fractured, even hopeless. Sylvain felt as though he had been thrown from his horse suddenly, to hear Felix sound that way.

“He’s our friend,” Sylvain said, firmly. “Don’t be dramatic. We’ll make our case to Edelgard for some horses and supplies. We go back. We talk to him.”

He fixed his gaze on Felix.

“Is he your friend or not? Are you in? Ingrid?”

“I’m in,” Ingrid said.

Sylvain reached to her, and she reached back. Though they were too far to touch, it felt just like shaking on it. Both of them looked to Felix, and Sylvain reached out his other hand. Felix held his gaze a long moment, and he didn’t look like he believed Sylvain even one little bit. He seemed like he had given up, then he nodded and took his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m in. Just so you two don’t get yourselves killed trying.”

“Annette?” Sylvain said.

“I can’t,” she said. “My... my father is deep in the church, and he’s left my family behind before. He wouldn’t vouch for me.”

Sylvain’s heart twisted. He saw it on Felix’s face, too, and Ingrid’s. All he could do was nod.

“Then you stay here where it’s safe,” Sylvain said. “Edelgard will keep you safe, and you can be a voice for Faerghus here. We’ll need someone representing us while we’re gone, and then we’ll be back here as soon as we can.”

Annette nodded. She looked terrified, but resolved.

“Now I have to go talk to Edelgard,” Sylvain said.

He stood up. Students moved for him, and he cherrypicked his way through them, getting a foot on the floor where he could to get to the front. Ingrid fixed him with an alarmed look.

“Now?” she said, incredulous. “It’s dark out, and the caravan isn’t going to stop just so you can find out where Edelgard is... there must be dozens of carriages, over a hundred horses...”

“Every minute we spend in here takes us further and further from Garreg Mach,” Sylvain replied. “I have to go now and convince her. We’ll never make it on foot.”

He stepped over Ingrid’s legs. He opened the canvas cover shielding the back of the carriage, and he stuck his head out to look. They were moving at a decent clip, but it looked possible to jump as long as he hit the ground running. He looked for the iron latches to drop the wooden door, but he didn’t think he could reach them from the inside, much less get it closed again while following. He would have to climb over it.

“You’re going to get killed,” Felix warned.

"Dimitri won't get through this without us," Sylvain shot back.

But Sylvain didn’t have time to stick around and argue. He hopped from the carriage. He landed in deep mud, and he grimaced, as he had to keep moving immediately to keep up, let alone get ahead of them. It startled all of them to see how quickly they were actually moving. What struck him even worse was the rain itself, however — it fell in thick sheets, like daggers in his skin.

“Oh fuck, that’s cold,” Sylvain blurted out.

A soldier on horseback behind them shouted, but Sylvain ignored him.

“This is too dangerous, get back in,” Ingrid said, leaning out the back and reaching a hand out for him. “We’ll find her when we stop next!”

“That might be hours from now,” Sylvain said, and he reached to her. He held her hand for a brief second and then let go, as he did not want to risk pulling her out with him. “Sit tight. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Their gruelling pace proved even more gruelling on foot. Even by time he caught up with the front of the carriage, his boots and pants were so thick with mud that he felt he was carrying extra pounds. The rain had picked up considerably since their departure, and it felt ice cold as it lashed down on them. Sylvain felt nature itself was dogging them, as though they had upset the Goddess so terribly that she would kill them on the road rather than let them escape to Enbarr.

If they were even going to Enbarr, anyway. Sylvain hadn’t a clue. He just knew they were headed south.

When he caught up with Edelgard, he would find out.

He wasn’t sure how far behind his carriage was from the end of the line, as it was so dark that he could only see ten, maybe fifteen feet ahead of him. Soldiers on horseback flanked the carriages, making it a dangerous squeeze to get between them and the carriage wheels, but Sylvain pushed through anyway, running in thick mud. One bad slip and he’d be a goner under the wheels or under hooves, and the mounted soldiers cast him worried looks, unable to stop for him if he fell. He didn't care. Every foot they traveled was a foot further away from Dimitri, and any hope of reconciling with his friend. He was scared, and he knew Dimitri was too.

He had to try.

Two carts up the line, he saw a brown hand stick out the back of the drawn cover and wave to him. It was a supply wagon with high sides and so he couldn’t hope to climb up on it to take a break, but he veered over a bit, huffing and puffing, and he stepped up onto a metal hitch on the underside and held onto the edge of the cart for dear life. Petra peeled back the cover just enough to peek at him, concern on her face, and she placed her hands over his.

“You are doing foolishness,” Petra told him, concerned.

“I am,” he agreed. “I gotta get to Edelgard. Do you know where she is? Do you have water?”

She nodded and vanished behind the cover. He could hear people talking inside, muffled by canvas and rain. He adjusted his grip on the side of the carriage, muscles straining, fingers protesting at having to bear his weight that way. Petra reappeared with a skein of water, and she tried to feed it to him, but the wagon was too rocky to keep steady. He had to let go with one hand to take it, and he choked back a couple mouthfuls and passed it back to her as quickly as he could.

“Thanks, babe,” he said.

Despite the circumstances, Petra smiled. They’d been over the_ I-am-not-a-baby_ thing hundreds of times in the past month, and so Sylvain smiled back, and then he let go.

The ground was moving faster than he thought, or maybe the cold had numbed his feet, but when he hit the ground, he did not hit it running — in fact, he stumbled immediately, and he saw Petra’s eyes widen in fear. Sylvain strained and scrambled in the mud, veering to the side, and he felt himself come within a foot of getting run over by the horses and carriage behind him. He found his feet in the last second, getting back onto the side of the road, and he gave Petra an awkward wave. He was fine, at least for now.

He kept running.

Their caravan could not have been longer than a half kilometre in total, and yet Sylvain found himself running a whole one just to overtake the front end of it. Fortunately for him, Edelgard was not at the immediate front of it; he found her not too far up from Petra, mounted on a horse much too big for her. _Fuck_; he’d hoped for a carriage. He wasn’t sure how well he’d do mounting a moving horse with someone already on it.

“Princess!” he called.

She turned in her seat. Her long white hair was plastered to her head and back, and her eyes were large with alarm.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He imagined he looked like quite a fright, given all the mud being kicked up by the wheels he’d been skirting.

“Scoot forward,” Sylvain said.

“Excuse me?” she replied.

“I said scoot,” he repeated, and he made a shoving gesture.

Edelgard frowned, and then she shifted forward in the saddle and removed her foot from the stirrup. Sylvain steeled himself and sprinted up alongside the horse, and with a tremendous leap that had his gut twisting, he nocked his foot into the stirrup and boosted himself up, fitting himself right behind her. The horse tossed its head, whinnying loudly, and a rush of adrenaline hit him as he realized he’d made it. He reached around her waist for the reins, and she put them in his hands. Good. He put both the reins in one hand and put the other arm firmly around her waist and found her completely rigid; she was steeling herself to keep from shivering.

“You’re ice cold,” he said. “Why are you riding? You’re going to catch your death like this.”

“Everyone’s afraid,” she said. “I must stand tall.”

Sylvain wasn’t sure he wanted to be led in revolution by an icicle, but he saw her point.

“What’s so important that you had to run up here?” Edelgard asked. “You could have died.”

“You gotta let me go back,” he said.

Perhaps it was the last thing she expected him to say; she turned in the saddle, just enough for him to get the impression she wanted to see his face, but she couldn’t comfortably crane that far.

“Why?”

“I want to help,” he said. “Let me go back and make your case to Dimitri. I’ll convince him of what you’re doing. We can get Faerghus behind you.”

She made a tiny noise, something almost soundless, but he felt the hum of it through the hand on her ribs. It felt like a sigh. She obviously didn’t think it was a good idea.

“If he doesn’t believe you, you will have no protection from the church,” Edelgard said. “And even if he does, then what? The church _will_ turn to Faerghus for protection. There will be powers greater than he can contend with alone, and you’ll be behind enemy lines.”

“Dimitri would listen,” he said, even though he didn’t feel so sure about it, either. “Even if he didn't, I just... Edelgard, I’ve got to try. He’s my friend! I just need a horse, if I ride hard I can probably get there before midnight.”

“I can’t send you back on such a rickety hope,” she replied. He felt her hand on his; even through her gloves, her fingers felt like they were frozen to the bone, but her grip was strong, bracing. “Besides. You wouldn’t make it in these conditions. I won’t risk that.”

Sylvain could curse her for saying it, as the moment it left her lips, he felt how drained he’d been just by that run. What hope could he have to make it back to Garreg Mach? She was right. His horse would slip and toss him in a ditch, or he’d lose the road, or get swept away trying to ford a rising stream. He would die alone.

“We’ll be stopping to regather ourselves when we reach the river, and then it’s only three more hours to our outpost. Then we can talk further,” she said. “Go back to your carriage until then.”

He wasn’t even sure if he’d survive another run, even if it meant just standing there until the carriage caught up with him again.

“I’ll stay with you,” he offered.

“Don’t be a hero, Sylvain,” she said. “It’s freezing in the rain.”

“First of all,” Sylvain said, “I _am_ a hero, second, I’m already soaked to the bone, so huddling in a carriage is going to make all those cold _dry_ people crabby. _Third_...”

He gave her a pointed squeeze around her middle.

“What are you going to do if this horse spooks?”

Edelgard didn’t reply for a moment, but she also didn’t try to take the reins. She just kept that hand over his, and then she patted it twice.

“Very well,” she relented. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Princess.”

Sylvain did not regret staying. In the remaining two hours of travel to their regrouping point, the two of them shivered and grit their teeth against the cold rain, and at least twice were jostled badly when the horse slipped. At one point, when fording a rising stream, Sylvain had to maneuver the poor creature through the water without being able to see what was under it. A weaker rider might have let a horse spook, or been unhorsed, but multiple times, Sylvain tightened his grip on Edelgard and kept her in the saddle. She put on an excellent show of being strong, only once grabbing his knee for support as the horse stumbled.

Any other time, he might have relished the chance to show her how to ride. He’d imagined it before, some silly fantasy where she begged him to teach her, and he’d deny her and deny her until he caved. That thought felt a thousand miles away as his thighs strained against the saddle, as his shoulders ached from riding double for so long.

He had never imagined life and death being a part of this moment, but there it was, looming at the end of a one-way road. There were some things he was sure he wouldn’t be able to come back from.

At twenty years old, he felt much too young to be a revolutionary. Much too ill-prepared. Too much of a Gautier.

When they reached the river, the water was so high that it skirted under the bridge by mere inches, and at times little swells would catch the underside and spray against the stone edges like the ocean against a sea wall. It took some time to get the carriages over, as it was single file, and so narrow that some of the carriages could scarcely fit. Twice, a carriage had to back up and try again as it scraped the edges at too much of an angle to keep going. Students spilled from the carriages, bracing themselves against the rain and river spray in order to help push. It was a struggle. Everything felt like a struggle.

There would be nothing but struggle for at least the next little while — that was the start of a war, wasn’t it?

But eventually, they pulled into the clearing on the other side of the river. To keep people out of the rain best they could, the carriages were pulled in a circle, and people huddled inside of them peering out. In ankle-deep mud, Edelgard stood and addressed them, with Hubert behind her holding an umbrella over her head in such a way that left himself exposed. Sylvain, long resigned to the rain running down the back of his jacket, just stood off to the side of it all, too lost in thought to register what she said, other than something about how deeply she appreciated their strength and resilience. _Just as well,_ Sylvain thought. If they hoped for revolution, everyone would need to contribute everything that they had.

Stiff and exhausted from his run, Sylvain returned to the carriage with his fellow Faerghus deserters. He came to a stop at the back of it and couldn’t muster the strength to climb up. Ingrid looked at him as though she did not recognize him at first, and Felix pushed his way through the other students to meet him. Both stopped and gaped. He wondered if he looked that bad.

“Sylvain,” Ingrid said, relieved. She stepped to him like she might embrace him, but she held back, given how muddy he was. Maybe she’d thought he’d gone under the wheels or something.

“I rode with Edelgard,” Sylvain said. He had decided he would never forgive the Professor for letting her get out of stable duty every week.

“What did she say?” Felix asked.

“Too dangerous,” Sylvain muttered. Ingrid reached and touched his face with the back of her hand, and she looked back into the carriage and called for something. Someone passed back a girl’s short uniform cloak, and huddled under the edge of the carriage’s canopy, Sylvain stripped off his jacket and shirt and then draped the cloak around him. Better to be shirtless than shivering in wet cloth. Felix reached down and took him under one arm, and Ingrid under the other. They hauled him up. His knees felt like jelly. The students made a space for him in the middle, where he could share in their body warmth. He sat there with his legs out like a toddler, Ingrid crouched to help take off his wet boots.

“I’d rather keep them,” Sylvain said to her. “If the Knights of Seiros catch up with us, I’m not fighting barefoot.”

“They won’t catch up with us,” Ingrid said. “Edelgard said they won’t risk the road conditions. I’m more worried about you losing your toes.“

He watched her peel off his boots, too exhausted to help. He truly hoped she didn’t intend to take off his wet and hopelessly muddied trousers next. There was something impressive about being a bare-chested man in the middle of a revolution. The image was changed a little if he was pantsless, too.

“Everything we do from here on out is dangerous,” Felix said to Sylvain, “what makes this so unique?”

“She thinks he won't believe us.”

The three of them exchanged some doubtful look. The rest of the students in earshot looked similarly doubtful. Sylvain wasn't sure that his hope was fading, but his fear was certainly growing. It would tower over him before long.

He leant back against Annette’s knees. She was quiet, and she gently parted his wet hair with her fingers for a moment. She was humming under her breath. He recognized it as a war song. He started humming with her.

So did everyone else.

The fortress prepared for their weeks-long hideout proved to be a worthy space, though not a particularly homey one. In years past it had been a storehouse for military supplies, one of many established within a day of the border, so that armies could be resupplied easier, but in times of peace they were used as storage for lumber and other materials that fared better under dry conditions. In a pinch, it had also been used to shelter grazing sheep and cows in bad weather, or even people in case of natural disaster.

Sylvain felt like both a sheep and a victim of disaster — packed in a herd, following orders, soaking wet, tired, cold, and questioning his future. He forced back on his soaked boots to make it from the cart to the outpost’s door, his toes so stiff they felt like they might snap off if they caught on the cobblestone. Ingrid and Felix flanked him, each with a shoulder under his arms. As they led him to a prepared cot, shivering and feeling as though he would never be warm again, he contemplated the lethality of his position. He looked around them. He wasn’t the only one being helped in; a few other students were being propped up or even outright carried in. One girl was passed out entirely, flopped in another student’s arms like a rag doll. Sylvain watched them place her on a cot down the row.

He saw Felix watching, too. To his surprise, Felix looked a little excited. Felix nodded to himself, and then stopped when he realized Sylvain was watching. Sylvain gave him a querying look.

“This is what we’ve been training for,” Felix said. “All along.”

Ingrid grimaced, but her attention was elsewhere.

“Stay here, both of you,” Ingrid said. “They’re passing out supplies, I’ll get them.”

Ingrid walked off. Sylvain pulled his wet boots off again and tossed them aside, and then followed up with his socks. He gripped his own toes experimentally, testing the feeling left in them.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Felix said. He sounded a little concerned. “Run in the mud, ride in the rain without a cloak...”

“I’d do it again for you, you know,” Sylvain replied. He didn’t ever want to be thought of as stupid for trying his best for the people he cared about. “For any of us.”

Felix looked a little surprised; Sylvain wasn’t sure why.

“I’d rather you stay alive to fight.”

Sylvain felt too tired to laugh or tease in turn, so he just nodded in agreement. Felix sat down next to him but said nothing more. Sylvain continued to worry his toes, at least until he started to feel them again. His jaw felt sore from clenching to keep from chattering, and that was perhaps the most painful part. He wasn’t even the worst of the lot, either — he knew some students had ridden with wounds from when they’d fought their way out to escape Garreg Mach.

He knew some students hadn’t escaped at all. Some had been captured. Some had been cut down entirely.

Sylvain let out a long exhale, and it came out shakier than he intended. Felix put a hand to his back, just briefly, but even when he withdrew again, Sylvain felt braced. He just put a hand on Felix’s thigh and squeezed.

Ingrid returned with an extra blanket and a few laundry bags. They were laundry bags from the monastery, the same ones the students filled each week and turned over to the maids for washing. Sylvain noticed a great number of students settling in who were also toting fresh clothing — Garreg Mach uniform pieces, no less.

Ingrid checked the tags on the bags and passed them out amongst the three of them.

“I don’t believe it,” Sylvain said, taking the bag and opening it. The garments inside were certainly his own. The collars had his name embroidered inside, as did the trousers’ waistbands. Even his undergarments and socks were marked that way — every student’s was. Sylvain felt some melange of awe and exhaustion wash over him. “Did she...?”

He trailed, incredulity winning out.

“I know,” Ingrid said. “She had our laundry bags packed. She planned for this around _laundry day._”

“She’s a genius,” Felix remarked, as he pulled off his sullied vest and shirt for a crisp new one. Sylvain had to agree; it might have been easy to just load a cart up with fresh clothing for the fleeing students, but there was a careful touch in making sure they had their _own_ clothing. What could be more comforting, in a time like this, than having one's own possessions?

Sylvain had never been so happy to see clean laundry. He shucked off his awful muddied pants. All around them, students were changing in an efficient, professional silence, boys and girls alike. Sylvain did not redress beyond changing his underwear. Instead he sat cross-legged on the cot and wrapped himself up in the blanket so that he would warm up faster. Ingrid fussed over him, tucking in the corners of the blanket around him.

(As a little boy, he’d been pushed out onto a half-frozen lake by his brother. He’d gone under and been fished out by his collar by his father’s men. He had a vivid memory of being stripped down and bundled up by his mother. She had wept the whole time. Sylvain hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but as an adult he figured it had something to do with having to listen to his father in the next room, beating Miklan for it. Miklan had carried those scars for life.)

“I don’t think we’ll make it back to Garreg Mach,” Ingrid said. She sat with him on his other side and rubbed Sylvain’s shoulders through the blanket. “Not with you like this. Not with the storm. Even by day, it’d be a difficult ride.”

“You and I could make that ride,” Sylvain said. _Maybe_. “Felix wouldn’t. No offence, Felix.”

“None taken,” Felix said, as he neatly hung Sylvain’s damp trousers over the end of his cot. Sylvain felt touched to be doted over, but it didn’t change his concern that they needed to protect Dimitri.

“We still need to go,” Ingrid said, as if she read his thoughts. “But how? And whether we’ll be there fast enough to prevent him from doing anything rash...”

She trailed. All three of them looked up because Edelgard was coming towards him, and Sylvain sat straighter as she approached. She was wearing a fresh military uniform without armour, and her wet hair had been rolled into some sort of bun. Ingrid and Felix bowed curtly, and Sylvain just nodded a hello.

“I suspect Sylvain’s plan was actually for all three of you,” Edelgard asked. “Am I correct?”

Sylvain nodded, as did Ingrid. Edelgard sat down on the cot next to Sylvain’s. Felix finished laying out Sylvain’s clothes and sat next to her, though he left a fair bit of distance between them.

“Lady Edelgard, I understand that road conditions are poor, but we feel that time is of the essence,” Ingrid said. “Dimitri is a good man, and he would feel strongly about the truth about the church, but the church could sway him easily. If we speak to him soon enough, we could convince him to stand with you.”

“Some students who transferred from Golden Deer have said similar of Claude,” Edelgard replied. “I denied them as well.”

“Why?” Sylvain asked. “We’re in a better position than anyone...”

“Do you think someone who remembered to pack clothing for us all would have neglected to explore the Crown Prince and the future leader of the Alliance as potential allies well before this coup?” Felix asked.

Sylvain’s heart sunk, and he felt Ingrid deflate beside him. He wanted to believe that Dimitri could be so prepared, but he had always known Dimitri’s strengths to be elsewhere. Edelgard nodded so curtly that Sylvain almost missed it, and her mouth lingered in a tight line.

Sylvain thought of all of Edelgard’s missed board game sessions, and her late-night conversation with Dimitri. His throat felt as dry as the desert.

How had he not prodded further?

“It’s not that I don’t believe in Dimitri or Claude,” Edelgard said. “I know in my heart we both wish for the same ideals of peace and justice for Fódlan, and when I make my declaration of war, they will hear my reasons and agree. But having an ideal and fighting for it are not one and the same. Claude does not lead the Alliance yet, and Dimitri will be an untested king. They both have a responsibility to their peoples… and Faerghus in particular will take criticism of the church to heart.”

“So we just let him get swept deeper into their lies?” Ingrid asked. Her voice shook with a desperate restraint. “We go to war without even trying? He could listen to us where he won’t listen to you, my lady.”

“War with Faerghus is inevitable,” Edelgard replied. “If you weren’t prepared for that, you wouldn’t have come with me.”

A moment of silence fell amongst them. Sylvain suddenly didn’t care about the cold air anymore; his blood ran colder. He’d run over those thoughts a hundred times since they’d gotten the orders to flee, since the first time he stuck a blade in a Knight of Seiros, since he’d realized they were starting a revolution, since he’d decided he’d risk injury or death to plead with Dimitri to join them. But war? War was the whole point of their training.

She’d been planning this for so long, and he’d seen the signs. He’d just set them aside to think about his own hedonistic pleasures instead.

Sylvain stared at her. He looked at her pale face and the ribbons in her hair and the girlishness to her figure, and he realized all along, she had been at Garreg Mach to orchestrate this. All along, the student body and faculty alike had seen her as a mere child and confused her fastidiousness for that of a mere valedictorian. She had somehow found a truth under hundreds of years of church rule and spent a year slowly convincing people of it: ministers and educators, world beaters and revolutionaries, mercenaries and knights, nobles and commoners. There were armies gathering. There were entire outposts set up for an unknown mission. There were no doubt hundreds, even thousands of nobles and heads of state across Fódlan preparing to raise weapons and armies in the name of liberation.

And somehow, she’d earned the trust of countless thousands without even revealing her plan.

People followed her.

_Sylvain_ had long decided he would follow her, hadn't he?

He looked at his friends. Ingrid looked hurt, but she did not resist. Her code of chivalry no doubt balked at the idea of siding against her incumbent king, but she knew that peace under tyranny was not peace at all. Felix was steeled. There was a good fight waiting for him, a greater one than the one he’d already prepared for.

But Dimitri...

Sylvain swallowed.

“I’m allowing students from the Alliance to go if their courage fails them, but the church _will_ turn to the Holy Kingdom,” Edelgard said, finally. “The purge of the Western church has left a void they must fill to retain power, and Dimitri is an untested ruler. His own people may turn against him if he throws them into war against their own church, and he cannot declare war until he has taken the throne, which must be ordained by the Archbishop. When we take Garreg Mach next month, he will allow the Church to retreat to Faerghus. It is not safe there for any of you.”

Taking Garreg Mach? _Just like that?_ Sylvain let out a long exhale.

But none of them could argue. There was nothing to argue with.

“That may be, but I can’t sit here and say I didn’t even try,” Ingrid replied, finally.

Edelgard sat forward a little.

“How will you convince him?” Edelgard asked. “What will you do if he does not accept that your best argument is to go to war on _my_ behalf?”

Sylvain wasn’t sure. He knew his father and Felix’s father would support the incumbent king, and likely Ingrid’s too. Sylvain suddenly wasn’t sure if he had protection from his own family aside from being their only son, but despite being a coward at heart, Sylvain knew Dimitri was in a far worse position. Who was going to pull him out? Dedue, alone?

He had to do something.

“You’re trying to talk us out of this,” Sylvain said, a little tersely. “Edelgard, I know Rhea could kill us before we even see Dimitri. _We_ know that. But we grew up with him.”

Edelgard seemed like she might say something, so Sylvain held up a hand.

“And I know we changed houses, and that things have been difficult with him,” Sylvain said. “I get the impression you know more than you let on about that. But he’s still our friend, and I’m not going to just let Rhea tell him we’re in the wrong. She could kill him if he stands up to her. He’s in as much danger as we are. Someone’s... someone’s gotta help him.”

He swallowed hard.

“It should be us. And I’m going to go with or without your help, but I’d rather it be with.”

There was a long pause. Sylvain heard Felix say his name, so quietly it might as well have been a trick of his mind, and then Edelgard nodded.

“I understand,” Edelgard replied. “If you feel this strongly, you go with my support. We will deliver you ourselves when we lay siege to Garreg Mach.”

Sylvain breathed a sigh of relief. He felt it run through Ingrid, too. He didn’t dare take his eyes off Edelgard, but he could sense Ingrid choking up.

“I would have you remain loyal to Faerghus — Faerghus at its best,” Edelgard said. “You shall not speak a word about standing with the Empire. You will go to him and make your excuses — pretend you were swept up in this without a choice, or that you’ve had a change of heart. If by some miracle you aren’t killed at the gates, you will safeguard him from the Church, and guide him to make this war easier on us all.”

“You want us to pretend nothing has changed?” Felix spoke up, curtly. “We’ll be spies.”

“Friends,” Edelgard said. “Friends who have had their eyes opened to the true nature of Fódlan.”

Sylvain felt his breath leave him entirely, but his spine felt straighter, the cold gone entirely and replaced entirely with the warmth of resolve. He let the blanket fall, and he put an arm around Ingrid. He reached out with his other hand to Edelgard, who took it without hesitation. For the moment the three held each other.

Edelgard looked at them and slowly smiled.

“Get in here, Felix,” Sylvain said. He glanced at Felix and jerked his head in Edelgard’s direction. “Come on, I only have two arms.”

Felix sighed and offered his hand to Edelgard, who took it. Ingrid and Edelgard linked hands too.

They would go back for Dimitri.


	19. Anything At All

Mustering an army took time, but it was time that passed much too slowly for Sylvain’s liking. Normally, he would have liked an opportunity to put off his future, especially when it meant confronting things he had put off for years, but now it just felt like a drain on his resolve. It left him too much time to think, and too much time to find alternatives. Escapes.

Sylvain figured he knew himself better than anyone in the world. Ever since he was a child, he had pondered his place in it all, and now into his thirties, he had yet to find answers to any of it. What was he supposed to do with his life? He’d washed out as an academic for his laziness, as a soldier for his lack of integrity, as a friend for his selfishness, as a margrave for his vices, and even as a fucking stableboy and bodyguard for his birth. He’d never even been a good boyfriend, let alone partner.

Somehow, he doubted he’d measure up any better in the rebuilding of Fhirdiad. It felt crazy to even try, and given it all, he got the impression not even Edelgard had faith in his success. He wasn't a specialist in city building, or quelling an angry population, or refugees, or cholera. He figured he had an average accounting of those topics, but an account wasn't the same as having an ability to do anything about it. There wasn’t much he could learn in just the few weeks before their departure, and it seemed a bit embarrassing to sit down in the library. He didn’t suppose the Professor was up to teaching, if she even knew anything about it. How was he supposed to help?

Should he even?

If he didn’t get on the road as fast as possible, he’d find enough reasons to run.

(But then what? What else could he be, what else could he do?)

He thought maybe it was better on his mind (and everyone else’s) to pretend that he had everything under control, so that’s what he ended up doing. When he completed any inane preparatory task Hubert could spin up for him, he indulged in the kind of leisure only an accomplished man allowed himself. He saw the opera a couple times from Edelgard’s private balcony, in a borrowed suit that Ferdinand had left behind. He contemplated seeing some people, and some he did, and others he didn't. He slept with four different maids and one servant, and got drunk with a few others. Sometimes Felix joined him, sometimes he didn’t, but they usually saw each other for meals, and occasionally for an afternoon or evening they’d play cards on the floor of one of their rooms and talk about their school days. It felt like being back at school, in a way, which felt calming. It was, to Sylvain’s memory, the last time they had so much normalcy.

He also got back in the saddle more often. While Horse wasn’t very good for much else than being a pack horse, he sometimes took her out for hacks around the perimeter of the city, and spend a few hours reacquainting himself with the countryside. He’d drag himself back to the stables just before dinner. It built Horse's stamina, too. He thought he could even take her to Fhirdiad.

On the day before they were set out to leave, he went to the stables one last time. The Imperial stables were the sort of stables where horses were treated better than some poor people. It both amused Sylvain and filled him with a low level of disgust — on one hand, he loved horses and most of them deserved nothing but the finest. On the other, horses didn’t seem to appreciate the difference between a polished, juicy apple and a battered and bruised one, so what was the sense in decorating their stalls with ornate, hand-carved woods, or weaving their blankets with silks? A person might appreciate a nice thing more, that was all.

Still, he supposed Horse had lived most of her life in some dodgy brothel stable, cared for only to the extent that the grooms employed over the years bothered to. It was a kindness for the old nag to get to stay in luxury for a little while, especially after her grand adventure to Remire. Sylvain also got a good laugh at seeing her, because she had never looked more stocky and provincial than she did in a row with some of the most stately horses he’d ever seen.

“Oh, you must drive everyone crazy, ugly little thing like you,” he said to her, letting himself into her stall. She nosed towards him immediately, fishing for treats. Her hay was plush and undisturbed, and it made Sylvain glad to see she had not been stressed despite the change in scenery. “But you’re happy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

He stepped up to her side and stoked her neck with a firm hand. She snorted.

“Maybe when we come back from Fhirdiad, you can stay here,” Sylvain said. “No need to live in disrepute with me. You can live in luxury for the rest of your days. Huh girl?”

He chuckled and leant against her, an arm over her back so he could rub both sides of her neck at once.

“Do you always talk to horses like that, or do you reserve it for the female horses?”

Sylvain looked up, and though he stopped petting Horse, he kept his arms draped around her. Felix stood just outside the stall, a lazy smirk on his face. Sylvain smirked too.

“Excuse you,” Sylvain said, “I love _all_ horses.”

Felix scoffed, amused. Sylvain resumed petting down Horse, slow but hard.

“What’s got you in such a good mood?” he asked.

“I _meant_ to come in here to talk to you about something,” Felix said. “And then I walked in to find you talking to that ugly horse with a goofy look on your face.”

“Ugly?” Sylvain repeated, and he reached up to cover Horse’s ears. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, insulting a senior citizen. Have you no respect for your elders?”

“You’re such a moron,” Felix said. “How old do horses even live? Twenty? I’m twenty-eight.”

“She’s like sixty in human years,” Sylvain said. “_Moron_.”

“Sixty! And she still in better shape than you,” Felix replied.

Sylvain burst out laughing, and he left Horse in favour of approaching the stall door. Felix had both hands on the top of it, and Sylvain clapped his hands down over them so he couldn’t escape. He leant in and fixed Felix with his most winning smile. Felix recoiled immediately, and though Sylvain had the thought that he shouldn’t tease so soon after the Incident, he couldn’t resist.

“You been checking me out, Felix?” Sylvain crooned.

“Your armour fits so poorly I couldn’t look away,” Felix retorted. “You’re going to have to get that refit tonight, I don’t want to travel with you when you could get injured by your own gear.”

“You’re so serious all the time,” Sylvain replied, and when Felix tried to pull away, he gripped Felix’s hands tighter. He leaned in further. “I could just go without entirely. Or you could put me through my paces so I’m fit again, just bigger. I want rippling muscles. I want to be able to lift two girls on each bicep.”

“You are the most annoying person in all of Fódlan,” Felix announced. “I do not want to try dragging you out of bed at a reasonable hour to train, and even then, it’d take months to make any progress, the way you overindulge.”

Sylvain laughed. He’d definitely slipped into sleeping later ever since he’d left the brothel, and he felt little desire to go back, but he knew he’d have to for them to get the best out of daylight hours. He had started to overindulge, too, but as that thought sidled through his mind, Sylvain got the sense that Felix wasn’t just joking with him, and so he reluctantly released his hands. Felix withdrew very gingerly.

“So what did you come to talk to me about?” Sylvain asked.

Felix pursed his lips for a moment.

“I wanted to ask about Ingrid,” he said.

Sylvain folded his arms and leant against the stall door.

“Yeah? What about her?”

“I just wanted to know where she stands,” he said. “How she’d react to either of us being back in her life.”

Sylvain was so intrigued by the notion of Felix being concerned about being thought of that he almost entirely forgot about his own deep fear of approaching Ingrid again. He straightened up and fixed Felix with a wide-eyed look, and Felix sighed at him.

“I don’t know,” Sylvain said. “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“Tell me whatever you know,” Felix said.

Sylvain had no idea when, exactly, their last face to face conversation had taken place. He’d been in a regrettable state at the time because on a trip back to Enbarr from Gautier with an Imperial detachment, Hubert had sort of _dropped_ him, and he’d hit his head in the process, and he hadn’t been in a great state to begin with. Ingrid had been furious with him at the time, too, but she’d taken care of him because she was the single greatest person in his life. They’d talked. They’d talked about a lot of things.

“Uh,” Sylvain said, mentally combing over that conversation the same way one might try to find a lone spoon at the very bottom of a basin of dirty dishwater. “She’s probably going to be angry with me. And you... well, we didn’t know if you were even alive, Felix. I guess she’d be pretty happy to see you, but she’s probably at least a little upset.”

“I see,” Felix said.

Sylvain frowned.

“Why?” Sylvain asked.

“I was thinking about the mission to Fhirdiad,” Felix offered. “If you’re serious about it, I would like to accompany you as far as the city. I won't stick around after, but—”

Sylvain opened the stall door and stepped out into the aisle, and before Felix could move, he swept Felix up in a hug. Felix tensed up like stone for a moment, and then he relented, gently patting Sylvain’s back. He groaned when Sylvain lifted him off his feet by a mere inch, but Sylvain milked that moment as long as he thought Felix would tolerate it, and then he set him back down again, arms still fast around him.

“We’re going to have a great time,” Sylvain murmured into the fur collar of his cloak. Felix grumbled in his ear and pat him once more time.

“Okay,” Felix said, firmly. “You’re _welcome. _But you have to do something for me in return.”

“Anything,” Sylvain promised, letting him go. He leant back and cupped Felix’s cheek in his hand. He didn’t even think about it, he just barrelled on: “Anything at all.”

Felix set his jaw — Sylvain felt that slight little movement in his palm, and Felix just watched Sylvain in turn. Sylvain got the distinct impression that he was about to agree to something completely stupid, or most fearful of all, that Felix was going to make him agree that it was the last time he did anything for him.

“You’re cut off,” Felix said. “No more screwing around. No more drinking, no more carousing into the morning. None of it.”

Sylvain swallowed his breath and let go of Felix entirely. He put on a big smile and laughed, and Felix just stood his ground, unsmiling.

“What are you talking about?” Sylvain asked. He reached to jostle Felix playfully. “What, are you a holy man now? Can’t have a little fun in your presence?”

Felix held his gaze, his eyes set hard. Sylvain felt the laughter die on his breath, but he kept smiling a moment longer.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

Felix nodded, just once.

“I... why?” Sylvain asked.

He didn’t need to ask that. Felix watched him, unblinking, and Sylvain’s smile vanished as it settled on him. Felix knew. He wasn’t sure how, but even if someone hadn’t told Felix outright, he was suddenly afraid that he’d left enough clues for Felix to guess what had happened. He exhaled deeply and frowned.

“It’s not really like that, Felix,” Sylvain said.

“Either it’s a deal or it isn’t,” Felix said, firmly.

“I didn’t _say_ it wasn’t a deal,” Sylvain said. “Where is this...?”

He trailed. He _knew_.

“Edelgard told me,” Felix confirmed. “Not that it really mattered — I had put enough together on my own to figure out what happened in Gautier. I just thought you would have told me. But I guess you’ve always been that way. You pretend it’s fine. It’s _not_ fine.”

Shame filled him. Sylvain supposed he should have said something at one point or another, but it just hadn’t come up. He wasn’t sure if Felix would accept that as an excuse, or if the damage was already done, a dagger right to the core. Sylvain leant a little against the stall door, waiting for Felix to say something, but he just waited.

“I was going to get to it,” Sylvain said, gingerly. “I promise. I just... I was so happy to have you back that I forgot for a while myself. I didn’t want to admit how much of a fuck-up I was. I didn’t want you to think badly of me.”

Felix scoffed.

“You think I’d judge you?”

“Yes,” Sylvain said. He blurted it out without thinking. “_Yes_. After everything we’ve been through, after you _left_, the last thing I thought you’d tolerate was another friend unable to keep it together.”

“I don’t care about that,” Felix said. A flicker of hurt passed over his face, and that alone stopped Sylvain cold, but Felix barrelled on, voice lifting, frustrated: “I’ve _never_ cared about that. Not with you.”

Sylvain felt like his heart was hammering on the walls of his chest, threatening to escape by any means necessary.

"No," he said, "you did. You took off when the war ended. Clearly you cared about _something_."

"That was for my own problems," Felix snapped. "Not everything is done to personally wound you, Sylvain. I didn’t leave to get away from you, I left because I needed time for myself. It took me a _long_ time and a lot of distance, but I've made my peace with what happened. I just didn't need to find it at the bottom of a bottle, or inside someone else."

There were few things that cut like that. Sylvain had spent years imagining exactly what Felix would say to him if they had a chance, and to hear it with his own ears hit a nerve deep inside him, thrumming.

"Well, good for you," Sylvain said.

“Yes, good for me,” Felix said, sharply. “Are you going to let me go back to Remire and then keep on destroying yourself, one way or another?"

Sylvain scoffed and paced away. He had to. They'd roughhoused a fair bit in their day, whether for pleasure or to blow off steam, but that one stung so much that Sylvain felt his hands flexing into fists without even thinking about it. He felt Felix's eyes follow him away, and when he turned back, Felix looked ready for a scrap, too.

"Thanks, Felix," Sylvain said, as lightly as he could manage — he didn't get far. "For a second I thought you were coming with me because you wanted to spend more time with me, but I guess you just want to make sure _someone's_ being my nursemaid until Ingrid can take over, huh? Even though _everything_ I did to get where I am now, I did _myself_, without _you!"_

Felix heaved an exasperated sigh. If he didn't let it out, he was going to explode.

"I swear, Sylvain," he said. "You'll say anything to convince yourself people don't _actually_ care about you."

"Fuck _off_," Sylvain shot back. "If you cared—"

Felix stepped forward. Sylvain thought he might be about to get shoved, but Felix just took the front of his shirt in his clenched hands and drew him in so they were almost nose-to-nose.

"Listen to me," Felix said, dangerously low. "Really listen to me, for _once_."

Sylvain scoffed. He leant his head back and Felix just leaned in more.

"I _do_ care," Felix hissed. "I care more about you than anyone living or dead. Get that through your thick skull. But I can't take care of you. Not if you're going to just throw it away."

Sylvain wanted to be angry. He wanted to stew in it, and slink off to a clean stall and sit there alone and mutter to himself about how even his best friend thought he was a disaster and a fuck-up and an asshole. He wanted to dig into every bad feeling he'd ever had and turn it all on himself until it buried him. He wanted to wipe fear and frustration off Felix's face. He wanted to just accept that his lot in life was to endure. He wanted to forget that people did care about him, because if he could just embrace being who he was, he'd be able to let go of the guilt, the self-pity, the crushing loneliness—

Felix let him go. Sylvain hated that. Sylvain wanted to feel his shirt tugged by Felix's grip, Sylvain wanted to feel Felix's body against his, Sylvain wanted to feel Felix's care for him him, care for him powerful enough to rattle his bones and shout at him and _make_ him feel loved to virtually any degree.

Sylvain swallowed hard. Felix looked away from him, his eyes a little glassy.

“I'm really glad you're coming with me to Fhirdiad," Sylvain said, finally. He felt vaguely ill.

“Someone has to make sure you actually get there,” Felix said.

_To Ingrid's care, right?_ If she would even take him. Because even if Felix cared about him, he would go away again, and Sylvain knew he couldn't follow. He couldn't eke out any sort of living in Remire. He couldn't spend his days with just one person, one person who liked silence and quiet contemplation and endless discipline and boring runs up and down the same roads day in and day out, even if he adored that person. He didn't want to be a ghost any more than he was sure Felix didn't want to be… well, whatever Sylvain was. Whatever Sylvain did.

It left them at an ugly impasse, and Sylvain knew there was no resolving it. It would be that way forever, for eternity, no matter how much they cared about each other.

“Do you _understand? _You can't just—”

But Sylvain wasn't listening anymore. He wondered what Edelgard had said. He wasn’t sure if she would tell him if he asked. He felt a bud of anger in him at the thought that she'd revealed his secrets to someone as dear to him as Felix, and that it had put him in a place where he felt this hopeless.

He put on a tight smile. Felix didn’t seem terribly happy, but then again, Sylvain supposed there was no happy resolution to a conversation like this, especially not when they were at a standstill: an ultimatum was not a baring of the soul for either of them.

He did not feel good.

“Okay, well,” Sylvain said. “Thanks. I’ve got a lot to do tonight. I think I’ll go get it done. See you at dinner?”

“Alright,” said Felix, but his tone made something deep in Sylvain’s body tremble.

He walked away. He had to.

Pacing did nothing for him. The further he walked, the more he felt angry. Not with Felix — okay, maybe a little with Felix — but mostly with Edelgard.

What business did Edelgard have telling Felix anything?

Sylvain knew that he owed her a lot. Over the years, he'd amassed a great deal of debts to her, and in moments like this, he felt like she was throwing it in his face, and when she did that, he was that much happier to throw it back. She didn’t _own_ him — no matter what efforts she’d made in saving his life after the war, he was still entitled to his freedom. He could be whoever he wanted to be, and if he was a womanizing drunkard, so be it.

It was the only thing he’d been consistently good at, and it felt nasty to think that his one constant was something people reviled about him. So what if he’d taken it too far one point? He’d gotten better. He’d evened things out.

If Edelgard hadn’t pulled him back to Enbarr, he might have _stayed _even.

A vindictive thought came easy: she didn’t want him to go to Fhirdiad because she had the gall to think he wasn’t capable of it.

For what felt like the millionth time in his life, he stormed to Edelgard’s office. He did not make it that far; Hubert blocked his way, standing in front of the door speaking with the maid, Jasmine. Sylvain felt tempted to leave, but anger drove him on, and he pushed his way between them and rapped on Edelgard’s door.

“Sylvain,” Hubert said, voice glittering with danger. “Lady Edelgard is busy right now.”

“I was busy too, before you showed up,” Sylvain said, turning the handle. He shouldered his way through the door before Hubert could stop him, but it didn’t matter; even as he drew breath to start making demands, he realized the office was empty. He turned on his heel. Hubert stood at the door, now blocking his path. Sylvain could see Jasmine in the narrow sliver between the doorframe and Hubert’s body, and her eyes were as round as saucers.

“I was real busy,” Sylvain continued. “I was really busy, you know? I had a life. I had a life that I built myself. The only life I’ve _ever_ had that was my own, where I didn’t have people managing my every step or dictating my future for me, and still — _still_ — she had to take that from me.”

“Sylvain, perhaps I can assist you in her stead,” Hubert offered, his eyes narrowed.

“No, I need to talk to Edelgard,” Sylvain ordered. He kept his voice level, but he felt a shaking in his heart. “Where is she? She had no right to tell Felix my business.”

“Jasmine, we will continue this conversation later,” Hubert said, swiftly. He stepped into the office and closed the door, and though Sylvain did not fear Hubert, he certainly did not like to be enclosed in the office with him. Hubert moved like he was squaring off for a fight, and Sylvain did not want to fight Hubert under any circumstances. He wasn’t sure if he’d win. Not like this.

“Keep the door open,” Sylvain demanded.

“No,” Hubert said. “You will calm down, and then we are going to have a little talk.”

He gestured at the armchairs. Sylvain didn’t want to sit and talk about feelings over tea, like they were little girls at a party and not men who had seen war, and death, and violence, and buried themselves in all manner of causes to relieve themselves of the burden. Sylvain just gave a single, furious shake of his head and remained standing. Hubert shook his head in turn.

“Fine, then. Don’t.” Hubert said. “But you know very well I won’t allow you to see Edelgard in this state. Not after the way you behaved last time.”

“I was upset!” Sylvain declared. “And I’m not even half as pissed off now as I was then.”

“Forgive me if I decline to take such a risk,” Hubert replied.

Sylvain paced.

“For what it’s worth,” Hubert said, in a pacifying tone, “I _disagreed_ with her decision to tell Felix. When she did anyway, I assumed you would make things difficult for her afterwards, so I insisted she vacate her office. But I think I’m also correct in assuming you wouldn’t have told him at all; you’ve been avoiding the subject ever since I found you in that brothel, even with people who know your history intimately. The way you spoke to Lady Edelgard and I… it's as though it never happened.”

His perceptiveness felt like a knife in the ribs. Sylvain shook his head hard.

“It still wasn’t her right,” he repeated.

“Perhaps not,” Hubert said. He sighed, and his stately figure seemed a little more sullen in that instant, but he drew his chin high again to say: “Do you even _want_ to go to Fhirdiad? I find it difficult to believe you even know what you want, no matter how boldly you speak.”

Sylvain turned his back on Hubert and paced. He rounded Edelgard’s desk once, and then twice, and then a third time, and Hubert just dolefully watched him, his hands folded behind his back and his green eyes sharp.

Sylvain raked his hands through his hair, covered his face and bit back a yell, and then dropped his hands to his sides as fists.

“Yes, I want to go!” he declared. “Genuinely! But nobody seems to think I can do it. _I_ don’t even know if I can do it. The last thing I needed before leaving was to know even my best friend — the guy I’d _die_ for — doesn’t trust me with the task. Now it feels like he’s going not to be with me, but out of some… _obligation_. And that because of it, I've hurt _him._”

Hubert simply nodded. His lack of emotional response got on Sylvain’s nerves, and he demanded:

“I should just accept it, right? I should just accept that’s my lot in life, to never live up to expectations.”

“No,” Hubert said. “You should strive for better.”

If Sylvain had to hear one more bullshit line about living up to his potential, he was going to snap. He marched towards Hubert with a warning finger up, and he stood in Hubert’s face, so close they were nearly toe to toe. Hubert still just stood still, _watching_. Sylvain plucked up his courage to do something, to make good on the threat, to show that he wasn't about to be treated like a fool—

Sylvain let out an upset noise, something that started as a yell and ended up more like a whimper.

“Sylvain,” Hubert said, softly.

It was that barest thread of empathy in his voice that broke Sylvain; he crumpled to his knees, and because they were standing so close together, he ended up against Hubert’s legs like some sort of pathetic, needy dog. Face in his hands, Sylvain crouched there, forehead against the tops of Hubert’s tall boots. Sylvain sobbed for a moment, feeling as though the whole of him was going to crumble into dust, and then Hubert sighed above him. Sylvain felt ahand on the back of his head. It didn't feel like it was supposed to be tender, maybe Hubert just didn't want snot all over his boots, but Sylvain leaned into it, breath choked up.

For a moment, he just lingered like that. His own sounds disgusted him, too loud in a quiet, empty office.

“This is killing me,” Sylvain struggled to say, finally, between his palms. “I didn’t even care before, it was all just — bad things happened and it was just part of _life_, but now—“

“And now things should be better,” Hubert said. “I know. No matter how great the city is, no matter how united the people are, we will always bear scars, and some will heal better than others. And they itch, without distractions — you've always liked distractions.”

Sylvain dropped his hands. For the briefest second he glimpsed the shiny leather toes of Hubert’s boots, and the black cloak swept around them, but his vision was quickly too blurry again. He clutched at the cape and used it to dry his eyes.

“You are not comforting,” Sylvain retorted. “That’s a platitude, I’m so sick of platitudes...”

“It is,” Hubert agreed. “But I don’t think I’m capable of the kind of comfort you’re looking for.”

“You’re really not!" He made a frustrated sound. He shouldn’t be on the ground, crying at Hubert’s feet. He picked himself up, shakily, and Hubert steadied him, and Sylvain pretended it hadn’t happened at all. He said, bitterly: “I don’t even know what I want.”

Hubert gave a shrug. It didn’t seem helpless, but it was.

“I don’t know what you’re meant for,” he said. “Many people wonder the same thing, but they endeavour to find it, whatever it may be. I know Edelgard feels her comfort lies in Fhirdiad — perhaps yours does too. Perhaps it doesn’t. I cannot answer that for you.”

Sylvain nodded.

“I’m still going,” he said. “I’m going to Fhirdiad. I just...”

He trailed.

“Never mind,” he said. He shook it off. He steeled himself, swallowed the lump at the back of his throat, and he straightened up. Though his voice still came out funny, he said: “Don’t worry about me. Thanks, I guess. Sorry you had to see that. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” Hubert said. Sylvain wasn’t sure if that was about worrying or telling or both, but he didn’t really care to find out either. Hubert paused, and then asked: “Would you still like to speak with Lady Edelgard?”

“No,” Sylvain said, with a heavy sigh. He wondered if he looked as awful as he felt, and he felt like a snotty mess. He didn’t need Edelgard’s iron-fisted compassion right now. He didn’t want to risk crying at _her_ feet, either. “I should go to the blacksmith and get my armour adjusted. See you.”

Hubert nodded, and he stepped aside and opened the door for him. Sylvain left, and without another word, he headed back down the hall. Conscious that his eyes were undoubtedly red and irritated, he fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. It wasn’t very helpful because it was one of those useless lacy handkerchiefs that girls thought were fine, but it was all he had. Like a dead man walking, he shuffled back up to his room.

It felt like the longest walk of his life.

He let himself in and found that he wasn’t alone. Jasmine was there, a look of concern on her pretty face. The moment they locked eyes, she rushed to him and slipped herself into his arms, and she looked up at him like his pain was her own.

“You look like a mess,” she said. He wasn’t sure if he was glad that she dropped the playfully-rude thing, or if he would have preferred to get his ass kicked into shape. She pet his face. “Are you okay? Did I get you in trouble? Do you want me to draw you a bath, or...?”

She tilted her head in coquettish invitation, asking him to pull her up against him and bury his face in her neck and rub away the bad feelings with the friction of her body. Sylvain nodded numbly, and then he pressed her against the door with the weight of his body, his hands on her hips. She arched her back a little when he slipped a thigh between hers and nudged her onto her toes. She made a sound — a hitched breath, doe-eyed. It might have been nice if he wasn't acutely aware of how clammy his face felt.

Then he paused.

He looked down at her and wondered what she saw in him. He wondered if she knew anything at all about him, other than that he was charming and playful and a good lover, and if she would continue to show such care if she knew the truth about him. In that moment, she looked frightfully young; eighteen, but naive under that wittiness, that cleverness he mistook for worldliness. Too young to have really known war times, too young and too close to the royal family to have even served in any peripheral role. Too young to have traveled, too young to understand him or his life. He hadn’t thought about her at all while he was in Remire, and yet here he was, acting like he was coming home to a lover.

She shifted in his grip like she was anticipating him doing something, and she inhaled in a way that had her breasts rising out of the neckline of her dress, pressed between him and the door. Sylvain swallowed his breath.

Just because she was clever didn’t give them anything in common. Just because she initially rebuffed him didn’t mean she was a challenge. Just because she liked him didn’t mean it was appropriate to be sleeping with the maids. He wasn't supposed— he shouldn't be—

He knew all that, didn’t he? How many times had he been told that, and how many times had he never listened?

Just because he felt like shit didn’t mean he had to go taking it out on someone else.

“I can't,” he told her. He gently let her go, setting her back on her feet. “I’m... I’m sorry.”

He watched her face fall.

_Great_, he thought. One more person he disappointed. The solace that he was doing the right thing didn’t feel nearly as great as he thought it would, but it was there, like a pathetic cherry on top of a pile of horse shit.

“Why?” she asked.

He couldn’t say. He just fumbled on thoughts for a moment and then walked her to the door with a hand on the small of her back.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said.

“But you’re going tomorrow,” she protested.

“I know,” he said. He closed the door, and though she was out of his sight in an instant, the image of her confused face lingered in his mind’s eye a moment longer, and then another, and then another. It was so similar to what he’d seen on Charmaine’s face, and he hadn’t even given Jasmine the luxury of declaring she’d never speak to him again, on _her_ terms.

Sylvain felt alone.

He shuffled to bed and laid down fully-dressed. The strength felt as though it had slipped through every pore in his body and vanished into thin-air, and for a long time, he lay there boneless, trapped in circular thoughts about it all: about women, and drinking, and Felix, and Edelgard, and Ingrid, and hurt, and comfort, and Fhirdiad, and Faerghus, and Dimitri, and how he was the common denominator in it all. The pivotal point, the central axis. It all felt like too much to reconcile and bring together.

He closed his eyes, dug his hands into the front of his own shirt, and held his breath until he couldn’t any longer. Then he lay there some more, his hands still fisted in the front of his shirt.

His shirt felt funny.

He looked down at it, pulling it up. It was his turquoise silk shirt, one of the ones that Hubert had bought him, and the funny feeling was tiny stitches along the breast, and a thick lump of fabric underneath. He pulled it up and laid his eyes upon the whale-tail patch that Bernadetta had embroidered for him, and he felt his heart swell at the sight. He’d almost forgotten it.

Sylvain ran his finger over it, over the red-threaded fins and the white-threaded shiny wet spots, and he thought of the joy he’d felt that day: the fresh air, the beautiful shores, Bernie’s laughter, a gift just for him, and the prospect of seeing Felix again.

He held that joy in his hand, small and simple.

Sylvain swore to himself that come dawn, he was going to stroll out his bedroom door and towards Fhirdiad, where he could become the man he was meant to be, and he would _never_ look back again.

“Edelgard,” Hubert said, near breathless, from the doorway.

If such casual address from Hubert wasn’t enough to pique her concern, he looked like he might have run there, and Edelgard had seldom known Hubert to run. Edelgard rose to her feet, her fingertips poised lightly on the edge of the desk.

“What is it?”

“Sylvain,” Hubert said. "He's in the foyer."

For a moment, they shared a look, and then Edelgard moved across her office and into the hall. Edelgard strode with such purpose that Hubert endeavoured to keep ahead of her to lead, even with those long legs of his.

“Do you know what set him off?” she asked.

“Regretfully, no,” Hubert replied. “But he’s demanding to see you, to say nothing of his temper…”

He trailed off, but he didn't need to say more. Though it had been some time since the last incident, she had little doubt in her mind as to what had happened. Together they went down to the grand foyer of the Imperial Palace. Edelgard felt a calm settle on her as she steeled herself mentally, and physically, too. She pushed away her frustration, too. Sylvain would never suffer a meltdown in his room, or in her office, or somewhere else with a degree of privacy. It just wasn’t in his character to go gently, or reasonably, or with consideration for others, at least not when he was in a great deal of pain. If he sensed she was irritated with him, then the situation would only be worse.

Edelgard saw Sylvain before Sylvain saw her. From the top of the stairs, she had a bird’s eye view of the crowd gathered around him. He was not alone in this ring of onlookers; Dorothea was with him, and she was arguing with him furiously. Sylvain pointed a finger in her face. He shouted for her to get away from him, that she was not the one he wanted to see, and Edelgard heard her own name repeated over and over. She felt Hubert look at her, and then the seething, indignant fury radiating off his person. She did not match it.

She briskly took the stairs down two at a time. A few people turned their heads, and then more did.

"That's quite enough," she ordered.

Dorothea turned to look at her, and then Sylvain did, too. Edelgard stepped out of the crowd. Sylvain immediately moved towards her, staggering as he started. Dorothea tried to stop him with a hand on his arm, but he pushed her away from him carelessly. Dorothea called after him cruelly, and he paid her no heed. Edelgard didn't really care what was being said; she kept her eyes on him. His face was red and puffy, and he was sweating like a pig. His cheeks glistened with fresh tracks of tears.

"About time!" he shouted. "I tried to see you _yesterday_ and I've been trying to see you _all day_, but _now_ you'll talk to me?"

“You know you're supposed to talk to Hubert for anything urgent," Edelgard said, firmly. "But no matter. If you’d like to speak with me, Sylvain, you can now, if you come with me somewhere private."

Maybe he thought she’d cower if he planted himself directly in front of her, but she just lifted her chin. He was a great deal taller than her even when she wore a sensible heel, and he leant over her as if he expected to intimidate her. He smelled so strongly that she thought he would breathe fire if she only lit a match.

She just felt sad for him.

"No," he uttered. "I'll say it right here. You're trying to hide me. But the people should know, right? I'm a fuck up. I'm a traitor. They don't know what I did!"

"Sylvain," she said, carefully. "The only despicable thing you are guilty of is carousing to excess."

"No! I didn't fucking stop the war!" Sylvain shouted. "I didn't do enough! People are dead because of me! The war went on _longer_ because of me! Fhirdiad is _ruined_ because of me! People I loved and cared about are dead because of me!"

Edelgard frowned. Sylvain crowded into her space more, so close that her petticoats were pushed back and his chest bumped hers and she _had_ to take a step back to not get knocked over. He shouted despite his proximity, spit flying off his teeth:

"And because of you, because_ you _made me do it, even though I was never supposed to be anything more than a fucking piece of shit nobleman!"

She narrowed her eyes.

"You made me do it!" he repeated, louder still. His voice bounced off the high ceilings. Some people scurried out, others lingered in their tracks nervously, as if any movement might prompt him to savage them next.

Edelgard put her hands to his chest and pushed him off. He staggered, his balance poor, and Edelgard returned her hands to her sides.

"I didn't make you do anything," Edelgard replied, slowly, calmly. "But you're right, in part. Allowing you to remain in Fhirdiad as long as you did was an incalculable error on my part. But we've talked about that many, many times."

"You should have pulled me out!" Sylvain bellowed, gesturing at her with every word. Even with some distance returned, Edelgard could feel the heat radiating off of him, heat like he could burst into flames. She thought that she had struck the flint. Tears ran down his face. "What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm not a revolutionary! I'm not a world-changer! I'm a coward and I always have been, you stupid bitch!"

That stuck her as sharply as a blade.

"What would you have had me do that I did not already try?" Edelgard demanded. "Should I have seized you by your collar and dragged you––"

He slapped her.

She took it with strength, her head whipping aside in a way she felt run from her neck through to her shoulder, but her body only staggered. People much bigger than her had fallen under Sylvain's assault before, that she knew, but she had been hit by bigger and worse and remained standing. For a moment the world was silent, and then Edelgard put a hand to her stinging cheek.

He was shaking as though he had been the one hit.

"Leave," she said, sharply, but not to him. She was addressing the people. For a moment they did not budge, but when she turned her head to look at them, they dispersed as quickly and quietly as they could, looking over their shoulders as long as possible. Hubert was standing some ways away with his knife out. Dorothea had a hand over her mouth. Edelgard looked back to Sylvain just in time to see his face crumbling with guilt and fear, and then he just as quickly steeled himself again.

She knew he was about to run. With a mere glance towards the doors, the guards flanking them moved to block his way, their arms at the ready.

"Are you going to stop me from leaving, too?" he demanded.

"I am telling you to walk with me peacefully, up to your room," she said. "We can talk there, or you can take to your bed and sleep this off, so that we can talk in the morning."

He let out a deep, shuddering breath and then he rushed her. Though drink had destroyed his coordination, it had done nothing to diminish his size or the raw chord of his emotions. It didn't matter. She was ready for it that time. She braced herself, tucked her chin and put a shoulder into his chest as he tackled her, but she had no shield to plant into the ground. She heard a low thrum ringing in her ears, and a flash of light as her blood sought to protect her, to defend her from harm. It did not matter. She saw a mark of death flash over him. She was an immovable object, but Sylvain was an unstoppable force. All she could hear after that was shouting.

If he wanted to be on his own, he would have it.

_End of Part 1._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words cannot express just how grateful I am to everyone who has read this, and left wonderful comments, and linked it to their friends -- this project has been absolutely massive and rewarding and exciting, and it means a lot to me to have such a warm reception.
> 
> I have currently written up to 33 so for part 2 we'll be continuing with weekly Friday updates; I might switch to posting them around lunchtime rather than first thing in the morning, though, as my work schedule will be changing. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy part 2.


	20. Human Shit

The man known as Sylvain Jose Formerly Gautier was teaching himself to be an early riser. Just weeks ago, he would have loathed to be disturbed before noon, but long days in the saddle and the need to conserve lantern oil had pressured him into sleeping just after nightfall and rising with the sun once more. He didn't like it, but it was better that way. There was little joy in being seen as the most irresponsible person in the battalion, and the few nights he'd caroused had ended with arguments that left him kicking himself for being all talk and no action. The convoy from Enbarr to Fhirdiad did not allow him much privacy to work those things out on its own, either. It felt like _everyone_ knew who he was, and what he was struggling with. It made him feel like he was being watched.

He _was_ being watched.

Eyes followed him wherever he went. It started as soon as they crossed the imagined line into what was formerly the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the eyes followed them from every moment on. They peeked through windows in small villages, and from the side of the road when carthorses pulled off to let the army pass. They watched the battalion from shabby tavern windows and from the barren fields, and no matter how many times Sylvain told himself that it was because he was a Northern man in the company of an Adrestian-born and bred army, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they knew something about who he was.

He was even watched from the ditch. The corpse of a farmer was laid in the rut, his decay slowed by the snow he was half-buried in, his empty eye sockets cast towards the road. No one but Sylvain paid the corpse much attention. Most people had their eyes on the job, and on the city ahead.

But Sylvain looked back. It had been a long time since he had seen bodies strewn about. He thought about nudging his horse into a run and moving along as quickly as possible, but he couldn't in their tight formation. It gave him time to ponder, and he didn't like that.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Felix piped up.

Sylvain tore his gaze from the ditch and looked at Felix instead. His companion was watching him, too, but that gaze felt a little warmer than the rest. He wasn’t smiling, but that warmth was enough to ease Sylvain up a little. Just a little.

“Don’t you think it’s sad?” Sylvain remarked. “He’s out here all alone, and nobody is even going to come get him? We’re just going to march by…”

“I suppose so,” Felix said. He put his eyes ahead of them again. “Let me guess. You want to stop so we can pick him up, and take him into town to see if anyone knows him.”

“Yeah, actually.”

Sylvain knew he didn't have the authority to stop the battalion and do just that, and so he didn’t even try. They couldn’t know how long that body had been there, or how he had died, or why he had been left there. Even if they assumed no one was coming back for him, moving around corpses of unknown origin wasn’t terribly wise, especially not when heading into one of the most fragile cities in all of Fódlan.

“At least bury him, you know?” Sylvain murmured, but they’d long passed on. He didn’t crane his head to look back any longer, and instead he turned his gaze to the city walls ahead of them. It had been years since he’d seen those walls — since the moment he left, he had thought that he would never return, and to be there now was deeply troubling.

“You can’t,” Felix said, finally. “You know why.”

Sylvain sighed, so deeply and heavily that he felt like his soul slipped from his body.

“Because if we stop to bury one, we’re going to have to stop to bury them all,” he said, like a common schoolboy reciting the virtues.

Felix nodded curtly. He didn’t seem bothered at all, and that filled Sylvain with a deep calm, one that made him sit a little more comfortably in the saddle. If Felix was calm, there was nothing to worry about. Felix was calm even in the midst of battle, even when ending lives, even when looking at bodies. That felt like the most stability that Sylvain could ask for, and he settled into it in that moment, knowing he had a long day ahead of him.

It wasn’t just going to be a long day, either. It would be a long week, or maybe a long month. Perhaps it would even be a long _year _if he was that unlucky. What if he went into Fhirdiad and never left again?

And what if this place killed the man he was now the same way it had killed the man he’d been? The man he’d been was stronger, and better prepared. He’d been _fresh_ then. Now he just felt like a shell without a snail, and Fhirdiad was either going to purge the muck settled at the bottom and leave him ready to start over, or just smash him entirely.

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

_Courage_, he thought. _Courage_.

As the battalion approached the city gates, the watchmen let out a call on the horns. The horns were cut from the skulls of aurochs, the cattle farmed to the north of Fhirdiad, and polished to a shine so lustrous that the sun glinted off of them. The sound alone made an involuntary smile tug at Sylvain’s lips, and he glanced at Felix only to find him pensive.

“When was the last time you heard that?”

His voice sounded far more sentimental that he intended it to.

“A long time ago, that’s for sure,” Felix said.

It was strange to march to Fhirdiad with Edelgard’s company, but even stranger to be greeted at the gates of Faerghus’s capitol city by soldiers stripped of their heraldry. The guards wore blue livery, sure, and most of them were likely Faerghus nationals, but it was bizarre to see dozens of blue capes and tabards with no black stripes, no silver stars, and certainly no lions rampant. Sylvain dismounted for inspection with a growing anxiety. Some of the soldiers had no doubt seen Fhirdiad through its regime change, and while he trusted that Edelgard had seen to the purging of Kingdom loyalists from the ranks, he knew that any of them could harbour strong feelings about the agents who had changed their city, and he did not particularly want to be known as one of them.

It was inevitable, however. He supposedly had some sort of authority — not over the army, but at least as Edelgard's untitled envoy. He had to introduce himself and his purpose there in order to cross into the city, and while he knew he wasn't going to be turned away, identifying himself was bound to remind _someone_ of what role he'd played in the war.

A woman in full armour walked along the edge of their ranks, and Sylvain's dread felt justified when she slowed her paces and lifted the grille of her helmet just to lock eyes with him. He smiled, hoping to disarm her, but instead she beelined for him.

“Name?” she asked. She already knew who he was; Sylvain didn't doubt that for a moment. He looked her over, none-too-subtly, but he didn't recognize her. He supposed everyone looked the same in that much armour and winter gear, but her harsh gaze didn't jog his memory of anyone in particular.

“Sylvain Gautier,” he replied. He pulled Edelgard’s writ of transit from his satchel, and handed it to her. She looked it over. Sylvain added, after a moment of thought: “I'm here to see Ingrid.”

“Obviously,” she said. “We did hear you were coming. A messenger arrived before you even left.”

“Of course,” Sylvain said. "Who are you?"

She eyed him, and then she took off her helmet. It if was supposed to be some great reveal, it wasn't going to win any awards, as Sylvain remained completely confounded as to who she was. She had an unpretty face with unplucked brows. Perhaps if she smiled, she would look better, but her mouth dipped into an unimpressed scowl.

“I’m Captain de Gouges,” she said, finally. “Odd that I need to introduce myself, but Her Majesty did say I’d need to be patient with you.”

Hmm. If she was a _de _then she was nobility to some degree, but if Sylvain didn't know her, she was probably from a petty bourgeoisie family — a merchant family with just enough resources to have social capital. He didn't care where she came from, truthfully, but he didn’t like it when people took that kind of attitude. None but the most dedicated socialite could hope to know every single family with a drop of noble blood across the entire continent, so how could she expect him to know who she was? He said nothing to that effect, of course. He had already made a poor impression, and he wasn’t about to make it worse.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” he said.

“I’m not so sure that you are,” she said. He wasn’t sure what he had or hadn’t said to prompt that. “But I suppose it matters little. You may pass. Send Ingrid my regards.”

“Of course,” Sylvain said. “Thank you.”

He put out his hand for the writ, but she slapped it against his chest as though she wanted to punch it right through his ribcage. Sylvain braced himself as to not concede a step. Her palm rang against his breastplate, and he swallowed his breath, took it and pocketed it. She did not look at him again as she moved on. He stood with the rest of the battalion and Felix until the soldiers finished inspecting their caravan and supply train, and Captain de Gouges carried on to speak to the battalion’s captain of supplies. Sylvain watched her go, and Felix nudged him in the side.

"Idiot," Felix said. "You don't know who she is?"

"No," Sylvain muttered.

“She wrote a play called _Faerghus Preserved, The Tyrant Dethroned_,” Felix said. “Dimitri sentenced her to death, but she escaped before her execution date, when the Strike Force took the Silver Maiden.”

“Dimitri and Rhea handed out imprisonment and execution orders like mugs of ale at a tavern,” Sylvain said. Felix frowned. Sylvain felt as though they were dancing around something very delicate, and he got the impression he wasn’t supposed to be the one leading. "Am I supposed to know her? I kind of got the impression she thinks I’m the the biggest piece of shit."

"The parts of Faerghus that sided with the Empire loved her," Felix said. "For a while we couldn't go a week without hearing about her. She's a legendary swordsman, and a proud critic."

"One of thousands," Sylvain said, pointedly, but he was supposed to be trying harder to be better, wasn't he? Criticizing women who didn't like him didn't seem like a great way of doing that. He changed his tone: “She wrote a play about Dimitri? Was it shown?”

“If it was, it wasn't shown anywhere in Faerghus,” Felix said.

Sylvain imagined she wouldn’t have even survived to an execution date if that was the case; whether the tyrant be Rhea or Dimitri, she would hardly have made it to a proper trial. Sylvain made a note to ask her if he could catch her in a good mood. It didn’t seem likely, but his curiosity insisted he try. He liked the theatre, too. Maybe they could get a better impression of each other on common ground.

Once the inspection was finished, Sylvain, Felix and the rest of their company mounted again. The wrought iron gate lifted, the chains clanking noisily in their stone channels, and when it shuddered to a halt at the top, the company moved in. Out of habit Sylvain held his breath as they crossed the threshold, as he had done as a boy, and when he looked at Felix, he saw him doing the same. The two of them exhaled the moment their horses’ hooves cleared the other side. A smile flitted around the corner of Felix's mouth, but Sylvain could tell he was on edge. Both of them were.

Sylvain took his first breath in Faerghus for five years and found it the same as any other.He wasn't sure why he was surprised. Maybe he was expecting poison.

The city did not initially seem to be much different, either. The main road from the gate to the castle was flanked with the same great stone buildings, some of the oldest in the city, and they stood scars from when Rhea had put the city to the torch. Some of the stone walls were scorched black and scrubbed only as high as a man could reach, the rest left to be weatherbeaten away, but five years still hadn’t been enough. Market stalls made of wood looked even greener by comparison, having been rebuilt after the war. Holes punched by trebuchet fire had been patched with different stones from cheaper quarriers.

What did look deeply different to Sylvain was how packed it was. The people parted for their horses to pass; it seemed as though every man, woman and child in the city was doing their shopping in that single market on the Main Street. It was strange to him, as he had never known Fhirdiad to be that crowded. Fhirdiad was a very large city relative to its population. In previous times of unification, just three hundred years prior, it had only known threat from Duscur and Sreng, and even then, the mountains had provided the city with a natural barrier, and surrounding open land gave the city a strong view of any oncoming threats. Safety and space created sprawl. Enbarr had a larger population crammed in a city the same size; though it had seldom seen war on its doorstep, the marshes and the oceans prevented it from expanding to any direction but north, so the city had just grown denser over time. Fhirdiad luxuriated in space, and if it had not known such suffering, perhaps the city would have spread right onto into the Tailtean Plains and taken the title of Fódlan's largest city.

There were so many people that Sylvain felt as though he was fording a river, the crowds parting for their horses at the last possible second. And still, Sylvain reined in his horse hard as a child fell into his path. His horse jerked back, head nodding furiously, but he stopped just in time. A mother cried as she darted out, seized the child by the arm and pulled him out of the way, and Sylvain breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed to him that no one should cram themselves onto the main street when the city boasted dozens of markets.

There, not a hundred feet into the city, it occurred to Sylvain that there were no longer dozens of markets. Much of Fhirdiad was gone. Neighbourhood upon neighbourhood of wooden buildings had once stood in the shadows of Fhirdiad's stone walls, and now they were no more. They had drifted away on the air as ash and smoke — the homes, the shops, the markets, and the people alike. The Church had burned it all the same, a final _fuck you _to the people who just wanted their freedom from the war, freedom from the church, and freedom from tyranny.

Sylvain felt he was somewhere else entirely, somewhere new. He didn't think he'd ever been here before, and that the Fhirdiad in his memories belonged to the man he'd been at the time.

This wasn't Fhirdiad, and he wasn't Sylvain Jose Gautier. They were both new. Different snail, different shell. He felt surprisingly calm about that. A fresh start would be easier without the past lingering around his shoulders.

When they made it to the castle, Sylvain was too fixated on the state of Fhirdiad to overthink who would be receiving them. He was ready to start working himself into a nervous frenzy over it, but her voice slipped into his head as he dismounted, and then it was too late to start worrying. She was calling Felix’s name. He looked up and there she was, standing at the top of the steps. Ingrid. Her blonde hair had grown out to skim her shoulders, and she seemed a little paler than he remembered, but she looked well. Sylvain felt himself smile, and he raised a hand to wave.

Her attention remained fixed solely on Felix, who slid from the saddle and headed over to meet her. She raced down the steps, two at a time. When they met at the bottom they embraced, and Ingrid leaned into Felix's arms so heavily that both of her feet left the stonework.

“You’re really here,” Ingrid said, and she kissed his cheek. Felix huffed at her, but he tolerated that kind of fussing surprisingly well. “Edelgard sent reports. Ugh, I wish you'd written me yourself!”

“I should have,” Felix said. “But I thought you would have been too busy to read them, anyway. Your knightly duties, and all.”

Sylvain couldn’t quite see Felix’s face, but he could tell by the pitch of his shoulders alone that he was probably smiling, too. It made Sylvain want to shove his way in and bask in whatever they deigned to give him, but he felt frozen. He lingered at his horse’s side, waiting to be acknowledged, but it didn’t come.

“We’ve both been busy,” Ingrid agreed. “But it’s so good to see you! You look well.”

Felix nodded, and then glanced back at Sylvain. Sylvain felt himself turn to stone from the nose down, leaving just his eyeballs to swivel to Ingrid and anticipate her reaction. She looked his way for the first time. Her sea-green eyes locked with his, and her smile flickered, but she said nothing. She looked away immediately. That stunned him more than anything; he’d expected her to be angry, or to come over and kick his ass clear across Fhirdiad. He hadn’t expected her to pretend she didn’t know him at all.

“Want to come in and warm up with a cup of tea?” Ingrid asked Felix. "I have a little bit of time."

“I’d like that,” Felix said. He and Ingrid headed up the stairs. Sylvain followed for a few steps, but when he reached the bottom he stopped short, feeling the gap between them was more than just physical space. Felix stepped inside, and Sylvain waited to see if Ingrid would just follow Felix in and close the door behind them. She didn't. She turned and looked back at him.

“Are you coming?” she asked, exasperated.

“I wasn't sure if I was invited,” he said, like he was supposed to just freeze outside until she deigned to forgive him. "No hello for your oldest friend?"

He smiled up at her and opened his arms. He felt like some prostitute putting on a desperate bid for attention, all teeth and big eyes. She did not smile back, though he thought she did look very handsome even with rapidly dwindling patience. He hoped he came across as though he was the cutest, most forgivable man she had ever known, but he didn't get so much as a flicker of recognition. Ingrid's brows knitted, and it wiped the smile clean off his face. He hung his head.

“That mad, huh?” he said, finally.

“I don’t really know what to say to you,” she said, bluntly. She gestured for him to hurry up. “Come inside. You're letting the cold in.”

Sylvain nodded obediently and quickly made his way up the stairs. She waited for a moment, but not quite long enough to hold the door open. Sylvain caught it before it closed on his nose and he slipped through to follow her. He had a million ideas of what he could say to her, but not a single one seemed like a good idea at the moment. The back of her head taunted him. What would she listen to if she couldn't even look at him?

The door closed heavily behind him, blocking out the light. Sylvain blinked as his eyes adjusted to the torchlight. The front hall was completely barren. Not a single portrait nor decorative vase remained, and it was not in the same sense that Edelgard or Ferdinand employed their redecorators. The main hall looked as though it had been ransacked, and it was distinctly colder than it used to be, as even the tapestries had been taken. The ground crunched under his boots and he looked down to find the Archbishop’s marble floors completely unswept. Sylvain lingered to look at the mess. He recalled when those floors were installed. Someone had been employed just to wipe them every time a guest passed through.

“If it bothers you so much that you can't walk on it, clean it up yourself,” Ingrid said from up the hall.

“I came here to see you, not do chores,” Sylvain said, without thinking.

Ingrid scoffed and kept moving. Felix looked over his shoulder and gave Sylvain look that said _you are an idiot_. Sylvain mouthed back _fuck off_. He didn’t understand why Felix, a man who had left them both without a word so many years ago, could waltz right back into Ingrid’s arms while he scrounged for a simple hello. It didn’t feel fair, no matter how poorly he’d treated Ingrid. At least he’d tried. He’d _written_. And unlike Felix, irresponsibility was a staple of Sylvain's being. Surely Ingrid remembered that, and could forgive a man his faults.

It seemed forgiveness would, unfortunately, take some time.

Sylvain followed his friends into a side room. It was the chamber that Dimitri used to receive guests; not that he ever had many, as most people proceeded straight to the Archbishop’s receiving chambers, as the Archbishop had spared no expense in establishing the Central Church's new seat. The King’s throne room had become hers, and Dimitri had retired to this repurposed chamber, which had previously belonged to the King's Shield, and Duke Fraldarius had been shuffled elsewhere, and so on and so forth down the entire line of command. Dimitri had been okay with it, at least on the surface. It was manageable. Less pressure, Sylvain recalled.

It had been nice then, however, with stately mahogany furniture and heavy drapes. Now the room was largely empty, and the most prominent piece of furniture was little more than stacked bricks with boards laid across them to make a table. A couple mismatched chairs flanked it, one of which was missing its backrest entirely. The rest was all paperwork, mountains of it, bundled together with twine and stacked in crates.

Sylvain hadn't imagined this. He glanced at Felix and found Felix stunned into silence. This had been his father's office when they were children. Sylvain recalled playing hide and seek under the Duke's desk, and writing naughty things on unattended paperwork. He wondered if Felix was having the same rush of memories, too.

“It really was ransacked,” he said, without thinking. “No wonder Edelgard didn’t want to come. This is depressing.”

Ingrid marched over to him. He instinctively leaned towards her, but she passed him and closed the door behind him. No one said anything for a moment, and then she looked at his face, right into his eyes. Her mouth had settled into a hard line, and he watched her contemplate him. He opened his arms to her. She looked at his open arms and her expression was so judging that he wasn't sure whether to embrace her or just drop his arms entirely.

“Ingrid,” he said, gingerly. “Nothing? Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said, tersely, and she walked away again.

Sylvain looked to Felix, who was more interested in nudging chairs around, testing to see if they’d fall apart at the slightest shove. He didn't intervene, or speak up in Sylvain's defence, or even look at them. Sylvain wanted to shake them both: he was _trying_. He was here, and he wanted to make things right, but how could he do that if people were just going to ignore him?

He told himself he wasn’t going to run away, not even if it killed him.

“Okay, so no hugs,” he said. The drop to his own voice bothered him, but he swallowed his pride.“Can we at least catch up?”

“No,” Ingrid said. “I don't want to catch up. You can't show up and expect me to drop everything to throw you a homecoming party."

"I'm not," Sylvain said. "I… Ingrid, come on."

"I told Edelgard that I didn't want to see you unless you were getting your life back together, and nothing I've heard suggests _any_ of that to me,” she said, so firmly that he felt like she'd just dropped the roof on his head.

Sylvain swallowed his breath. Perhaps he’d made a terrible assumption about the permanence of their care for each other. Maybe he'd lost his touch with her. Being looked in the eyes and told he wasn’t wanted there stung worse than any self-flagellation he could lay upon himself. He looked for excuses: he hadn’t been _that_ kind of man for years! He had barely drank or fucked around for weeks, and when he did, it wasn’t fun anymore! He had decided to change everything even _before_ Felix found out! It had _nothing_ to do with Edelgard!

He knew none of that would work. If he didn't know who he was anymore, then Ingrid certainly wasn't going to know.

“She said you’d be glad to see me alive,” Sylvain offered, finally. “I hope that’s true, at least.”

“I didn't think you would even come, to be honest,” she said. “All those letters over the years — nothing but excuses.”

Ingrid shook her head and pulled up a seat for herself and gestured for the two of them to sit, too. Felix elected to sit on the windowsill. Sylvain chose the seat across from her, figuring she’d prefer to have the lousy table between them. The chair’s cushion was so ragged that it deflated under his weight, and he felt the dull end of a nail poke his thigh.

Sylvain thought it might be rude to abruptly change seats, so he just grimaced.

“I really am trying this time,” he said. “Honest.”

"Stop," Ingrid said, lifting a hand. "Just... stop. We'll talk later, when I'm ready. Right now I just… need to appreciate that you're even alive, at least."

Sylvain nodded. He sat in his discomfort like an overgrown child in a washbasin. Ingrid leaned back in her seat, and she looked to Felix, who seemed wholly comfortable with the awkwardness. Perhaps he thought it was endurable because it wasn't going to be his problem for long. After all, he had no intention of staying in Fhirdiad, and Sylvain found it difficult to not be upset about that. Not that Felix made a great buffer to begin with, but his presence meant _something_.

"Can I say one last thing?" Sylvain asked.

"If you must," Ingrid said, but she said it like she was going to throw him out a window regardless of what he said.

"You look great. Really pretty, and here you are, responsible for all of Fhirdiad — that's better than being just a knight, right? You're amazing," he said. His stupid mouth continued: "Did you hear that Felix was living in the woods? He looked really bad. I wasn't much better. Hubert took us shopping. I bet Edelgard didn't tell you that."

Ingrid put a hand to her temple, as if she was drawing upon some deep inner power she could use to set him on fire, or crush his head, or send his corpse underground. She was tense, and then she laughed. It was just a single burst, but it wasn't a madwoman's laugh, or a sad laugh. It was just disbelieving but genuine, and then it vanished altogether.

"No," she said, curtly. "She didn't tell me that part."

Sylvain smiled in a way that he hoped was bracing. Ingrid shook her head, and she resumed her stony expression. She turned her attention back to Felix.

“So. You're looking for the dagger?”

It didn’t take long for the three of them to settle into a shakier version of their old alliance. When there was nothing left to say about the mission, Ingrid took them upstairs to the entrance to Dimitri's quarters. It was walled over with multiple layers of bricks and mortar, and it had been that way since Edelgard had liberated Fhidiad from her captors. Ingrid supposed they could get some soldiers on dismantling the layers, but it could take some time, as she was reluctant to spare anyone when there were more important jobs demanding labouring bodies — security, rebuilding, sanitation, supply. Sylvain offered to do it himself, but looking at the towering wall of brick, he was sure it would take much more manpower than even his broad shoulders could muster. 

They would have to wait until Ingrid could spare them the time. Sylvain supposed that was fine. Edelgard was a patient woman, and she could wait another week or so.

(He had the impulse to joke that the sooner the wall came down, the sooner he’d be out of Ingrid’s hair, but he didn’t want to tempt her with the idea.)

There was also an unexpected levity in seeing the castle in such bad condition. If Sylvain had returned to find it just the same as he left it, he thought he might have gone madto walk through the memories he endeavoured to press into the tiniest, tightest recesses of his mind. Instead, the castle had been purged for the sake of the city: what hadn't been ransacked had been sold to raise funds, and the space had been converted to storage for building supplies and people alike. Soldiers slept in various rooms and halls, as they were too numerous for even the rebuilt barracks, and stacks of lumber were clustered in odd places, kept dry for the winter. The castle's former beauty had been squandered, peeking out only here or there in the form of a surviving bit of stained glass or a lovely sculpted brick or relief-work, but the walls were sturdy. The government, Ingrid said, was operating out of the city, out of a converted nobleman's estate; they'd torn the walls down and dug up the gardens to make additional outdoor space for court to gather.It was freezing to stand out there, but it was important to allow the people of Fhirdiad to shape the direction of their future within their own grounds, rather than looking to a castle that had housed their downfall.

Sylvain didn't disagree, but he just felt relieved to be in the castle not as a future Margrave, nor as a secret revolutionary, or even as a hostage within his own kingdom, but as himself. Battered as he felt, inside and out, there was a small joy in walking those halls behind Felix and Ingrid, listening to them talk, throwing in his own remarks here or there. He moved around the castle like it was another world, far from the place that had whittled him down into the person he had become. He could ignore the small pauses, or the unreturned looks. He could even tolerate being rejected.

It just felt good to be with them.

And in a sick way, he felt like the castle was a kindred spirit. Despite everything, it was still standing, and so was he.

Ingrid showed them to where they’d be staying, and there was no apology for the meagre accommodations. Sylvain immediately got the sense that _no one_ in the castle was getting preferential treatment, because they might have fared far worse if there was. Their room was a narrow space with a fireplace and a dodgy-looking bed. The entire frame rocked with the gentlest push. Though Felix grumbled about getting kicked in his sleep for the night or two he’d stay, Sylvain didn’t mind. As much as he missed his bed in Enbarr, he’d spent the better part of the past few years sleeping on straw pallets and on bed rolls, so it was enough to have a stone roof over his head, a blanket for the window and bed legs to keep him off the cold floor. Sharing with Felix was less of a concern o him than how dusty the room was.

"I didn't see a point in finding a separate room for Felix if he's not going to be staying long," Ingrid remarked. "I hope that's fine with you, Felix."

"That's fine," Felix said.

Sylvain just shrugged it off. Beds were a luxury item, and he'd taken that for granted as a young man. Garreg Mach's single strip of private rooms had been a luxury that hundreds of other students in dormitories had envied, as in villages and cities all across Fódlan, poor families slept, loved and died in shared beds. Lesser nobles shared beds with their retainers and handmaidens. Even the children of wealthy families shared beds until near adulthood; Felix and Glenn had shared a bed up until there was only one of them left, and Sylvain was certain that he would have been no different if he hadn't had a brother liable to smother him in the night.

Sylvain had often slept in the stables attached to the brothels he'd worked in precisely because he knew sleeping inside guaranteed he'd lack the privacy to do what he needed to. Compared to that, a couple nights with Felix was nothing.

"Besides," Ingrid remarked. "He'll be even worse without a room of his own. I don't want to be wondering what I'm about to walk in on every time I turn a corner or open a door."

"Come on, Ingrid, my usual spots haven't changed that much," Sylvain laughed, and she frowned at him. Felix fixed him with a deadpan look, and Ingrid just walked away. His laugh died in complete silence. Sylvain cringed and Felix lingered a moment before following.

"Nice," Felix said over his shoulder, dryly.

Sylvain heaved a sigh and followed.

"I'll show you where I am, in case you need me," Ingrid said, voice drifting from up ahead.

Ingrid’s quarters weren’t much better, either; it was a little bit homier with some books and a few wood-carved figurines of horses and pegasi, and she had a writing desk and a bed to herself, but the window had a break in the glass. It had been patched with some rags and pasted paper, but Sylvain imagined she must have been sleeping with an extra blanket.

“I though you were practically leading this place, Ingrid,” Felix said. He ran a finger along the top of an old chest of drawers; it came up clean, at least. “And this is where you sleep?”

Ingrid nodded.

"It's fine," she said. "I had another girl sharing with me but she passed away a couple weeks ago, so it's just me now. Might be like that for a while, too — not a lot of people itching to take up posts here, but it beats sleeping in the city. Beds are in high demand."

Sylvain thought to offer to bunk in with her after Felix left, but he kept that on the inside of his teeth. If she wasn't taking jokes, then she wasn't going to take innuendo, either, even if it came with genuine intentions of helping her out. Besides, he could feel Felix's interest in controlling the conversation, and edging him out of it for his own protection.

"It's a daunting task," Felix said. That was an understatement, given how little Felix seemed interested in contributing to any of it. "Knighthood not as well-respected as it used to be?"

“Ha! There’s still a few noble families in town who have offered me nicer lodging, but I know they’re just trying to curry favour with Edelgard,” she said. “And the people don't always trust us, even though they recognize how much they need us — we might have sided with the Empire, but we're the last remains of the old Kingdom, and we will save what is left of it."

Sylvain's periodic twinges of guilt were starting to feel like the persistent strumming on a lute, just note after note after note of shame. Sylvain wasn’t sure how Felix was so calm, either. After everything they’d talked about, he’d expected Felix to be more on edge, but maybe he’d given it a lot of thought on the road. It felt bracing, however, to have that strength at his side. It made Sylvain feel less nervous. He was glad to have him.

“But you've clung to your ideals,” Felix said. “I’m sure that lightens the sting of living in such squalor.”

Big opinions from the man who had been living in a burnt out village of his own. Felix’s windmill had been cozy, sure, but it lacked in people. No matter what Sylvain thought of that, he knew Felix would go back to it — Felix was happy with the shape of his life. He couldn’t imagine Ingrid was too happy about hers, even if duty kept her in place.

“It’s not too bad,” Ingrid said. “It’s chilly but it’s dry, and I can keep it clean. I prefer to keep my mind on what I do have. It could be a lot worse, and I can tell the people appreciate me.”

Her voice was sure. Sylvain just adored her in that moment, and he felt pangs in his chest trying to keep himself from saying it. She could put things in perspective in a way most people couldn’t, and she was resilient in the face of trouble, and she didn’t put up with nonsense from just anyone –– just them, he supposed, the two people she’d known longest. They had roots deeper than any conflict. He hoped they went too deep to be pulled up and thrown to compost.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve done,” Felix said.

“Thank you,” Ingrid said. And then she asked: "What’s with that look on your face?"

Sylvain realized she was asking _him_.

“Me?” he said. “Oh. Nothing.”

Ingrid raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay,” she said. “Come on. We’ll go to the library next. There’s someone who wants to see you.”

Ingrid took them up to the library, which was in surprisingly good shape; surprising because it had been one of the Archbishop’s favourite places, and Dimitri’s as well. Sylvain had fully expected it to be trashed for the former alone. True, the shelves looked more than a little picked over, but things were relatively in order, and at least a few people had made efforts to look after it. Sylvain wasn’t sure if it was a good thing. He felt the same temptation that Edelgard must have grappled with: to wipe away the misdeeds of previous generations could spare them all many ugly reminders. But on the other hand, it held much of Faerghus's centuries of history, and that was exactly what Ingrid was trying to grow upon for the better.

But whoever was taking care of the library wasn’t there at the time: the only person there was a man sleeping at a desk, and Sylvain doubted that guy was even remotely likely to be doing any housekeeping. His desk was general squalor: he slept surrounded by books and a variety of instruments of unknown purpose. Dozens upon dozens of little glass vials were scattered across the table, each tightly corked and then capped with wax. His forest-green hair splayed across his relaxed shoulders, and his face was half-buried in his folded arms. He made a noise as he slept, a quiet little sigh with each breath. He was dead to the world.

“Linhardt,” Ingrid called, softly.

Linhardt did not stir. Ingrid approached and tapped the table. Still, he did not stir. Ingrid sighed. Sylvain crept closer and took hold of the edge of the table with a grin, but Ingrid stepped in and stopped him with a hissed _don’t you dare_.

“Aww, come on,” Sylvain murmured, a grin spreading on his face. He hadn't gotten to do that since their Academy days. A good shake and a shout of "earthquake!" and Linhardt would be bolting upright.

Ingrid rounded the table and laid both hands on Linhardt’s shoulders. He stirred, just barely, and Ingrid shook him gently. That seemed to work, though Linhardt still took his sweet time sitting back up, smacking his lips and blinking off the last of sleep. Finally, he looked up at the three of them.

“Oh,” he said, dully, and then he sat up a little straighter. “You really did come.”

“That shocking, huh?” Sylvain couldn’t imagine why Linhardt wanted to see them — he couldn’t imagine a guy like Linhardt wanting to see anyone. Sylvain pulled up a chair and sat on it backwards, folding his arms against the top of the backrest. “I didn’t think _you’d_ be here, all the way out in the sticks…”

Faerghus was nothing but sticks, after all.

Linhardt heaved an exhausted sigh.

“I know,” he said. “I didn’t really want to go, but Edelgard has been funding my crest research and when something came up here, I didn't_ really_ have a choice. You know how it is, I'm sure."

"Sure do," Sylvain said. He glanced at Felix, who shook his head.

"That makes four of us, then," Linhardt said.

Sylvain imagined that was the first time he'd been in Linhardt's boat on anything. To say that their interests were polar opposites was an understatement: about the only thing they shared was basic bodily functions, and even then, Sylvain wasn’t sure that Linhardt possessed them all. On the other hand, he supposed it _was _odd for Linhardt to be within a hundred miles of anything resembling labour. If Felix was a hard sell for Edelgard’s personal requests, then convincing Linhardt must have been a monumental task.

“The same personal matter as Sylvain?” Felix asked doubtfully, apparently having read Sylvain’s mind.

“No,” Linhardt said. “You’re here for a dagger.”

“What are you here for?” Sylvain asked, frowning.

“Crests," Linhardt replied, as if he'd been forced at blade's end to repeat himself.

"Yeah, but what about them?" Sylvain asked. "What's there to do with crests in Fhirdiad?"

Linhardt looked at him as if he were stupid. Sylvain didn’t know what to say to that.

“What a surprise,” Felix remarked. “Edelgard still orchestrates all her secrets as though we’re at war.”

“Can you blame her?” Ingrid asked. Sylvain looked at her. She leant against the edge of the desk, her arms folded. “No offence, but you two aren’t exactly reliable. You both vanished on us.”

“Hey, I’m here on secret stuff too,” Sylvain said. Felix didn’t seem bothered by that absolutely offensive dig at their integrity, but Sylvain felt it pluck a nerve. “Are you here on some personal mission for Edelgard, too, Ingrid?”

“Fhirdiad is the capitol city of my homeland, and it's yours, too,” Ingrid said. "It's personal for _me_ regardless of what Edelgard wants."

Point.

“It doesn't really matter, anyway," Linhardt said. "I haven't been able to get much done in months, and with the cholera outbreaks, I've been forced into helping with that even though I'm not a doctor… it's so exhausting! But the outbreak is interesting, and as far as body-ravaging diseases go, there’s very very little blood involved, so that makes it tolerable.”

He leant his cheek against his hand.

“It’s a dreary subject but the road back home is so long...”

“No kidding,” Sylvain said. “It took us weeks to get out here.” Something occurred to him, and he reached out to give Linhardt a little shove. He couldn’t quite reach, but Linhardt got his meaning just the same. “Hey, aren’t you getting married soon? Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Linhardt said. “That’s a whole other matter... the sooner I complete my work, the sooner I can go home and do that.”

“Do I know the guy?” Sylvain asked. Or girl, he supposed, but he sincerely doubted it.

“I don’t know who you know,” Linhardt said. He did not offer even a scrap of other information. Felix gave a soft huff of amusement, and Ingrid smiled, gently touching her hand to her face.

“So I do? Not one to kiss and tell, huh?” Sylvain said. “That’s alright. We’re both going to be here for a while. I’ll get it out of you before long.”

“I doubt it,” Linhardt replied, with the faintest disbelieving smile. “Have you seen the city yet?”

“Not yet, but I will soon, right Ingrid?” he said. He glanced at Ingrid, and she ignored him. Ah, well. “You want to come with us, Lin?”

“I have too much to do,” Linhardt said, without any of the conviction of a person who intended to do any work after they left. He watched them a second longer, somewhere between boredom and sleep. “Besides. I only go when it’s absolutely necessary, as I have to survive to my wedding. I can’t risk contracting something awful. He’d never forgive me! He’s crabby enough that I came all the way here.”

He yawned.

“Well, I’d better get back to work,” he said, picking up one of the vials and holding it up to the light. “Talk to you again, Sylvain and Felix. Ingrid.”

Sylvain glanced up at his friends. Felix looked amused, and altogether fine with just moving along. Ingrid just shook her head, and she squeezed Linhardt’s shoulder before gesturing for the two of them to get moving.

“You’re not seeing the city today,” she said. “You’ve had a long journey. I think you should both rest, and settle in.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Felix said. He glanced at Sylvain. “Let’s take it easy tonight. There’s a lot to take in, and I want to rest before I head back.”

Felix was still going back to Remire, even after seeing all this, or perhaps _especially_ after seeing all this. He had to go back to his normal. Sylvain didn't really have a normal — Sylvain felt like he hadn’t really stopped moving since they’d left Enbarr, and he worried that the moment he stopped, he would never find the strength to get up again. Still, he nodded, knowing that the two of them saw it in him, too.

“Sure,” he said, trying not to sound too resigned.

It was going to be a long stay in Fhirdiad.


	21. Hostile Territory

Sylvain was certain he was being tortured.

A man like him craved company. He needed it, even. At Garreg Mach, if he felt lonely or bored, he could wander out of his room and seek out a companion at any hour of the day or night. He considered a day of classes wasted if it didn’t leave him with evening plans with one classmate or another. He made it his business to introduce himself to almost everyone, knowing someday he'd want to call on them. Whether it was a quick chat, tea, a ride, a roll around in the sack, a study session, a drink or a meal together, it was something he wanted. He wanted people. He _needed_ people.

He would have preferred thumbscrews or a rack to the hell that was being imprisoned alone. If he had known that he would have been brought back to Fhirdiad in chains, and denied even seeing the friend he'd come back to save, he might have thought more carefully about Edelgard's concerns.

At the very least, being imprisoned meant something very different when you were a nobleman. For one, you didn’t get locked up in rank, musty dungeons, and you had all the creature comforts a prisoner could only dream of. Sylvain slept on a feather bed, ate acceptable portions of food, had his chamber pot emptied twice daily, and could ask for books and other leisure materials. He was allowed to bathe once a week and his clothes were laundered regularly. But make no mistake, he _was_ a prisoner, and he would remain one until his fate was decided. He wasn’t even sure what that fate might look like, as they didn’t tell him anything. He had a vague idea of what he was being tried for — participating in Edelgard's ambush on the Holy Tomb, naturally — but from the day he, Ingrid and Felix had marched back into Garreg Mach with their hands over their heads, he had maintained that he had been swept away against his will by the rebellion. Being a hostage wasn't supposed to be a punishable offence, but maybe things were different in Fhirdiad on the cusp of war.

For all he knew, they would knock on the door that morning and put a hood over his head and march him straight to the gallows.

Sylvain paced his room for a while and then approached the window. It wasn’t really a window — it was a long vertical slit in the bricks, used in past centuries as an archer’s post. It was only big enough for a man’s fist to fit in, and so Sylvain could only press his cheeks into the groove in order to see out. He was high up, and facing east, which he knew because he could see where the sun rose. It was the same unchanging view he’d seen for weeks now. He wasn’t sure how long, exactly, he had been there. He’d made the mistake of not keeping proper count in the first week, assuming it would be over before long. Surely it wouldn’t take the church that long to figure out what to do with him, would it? At this point, however, he’d been in the room for something like twenty-three days, perhaps as many as twenty-seven. He didn’t know what was going on outside of the room, or if Ingrid and Felix were alright. He hadn’t seen them since they’d been brought back to Fhirdiad as captives.

He guessed they were in the rooms on either side of his, because the inhabitants rapped on the walls a lot. Sylvain had tried to communicate with them by rapping back but they'd never figured out a system. Felix was on the north side of his room, he reasoned, because the knights always went that way in a hurry to deal with that prisoner's outbursts. Ingrid was south because he overheard the occasional conversation about that prisoner's appetite. That was about it.

Sylvain looked out at what he could see of Fhirdiad. There was a procession of some sorts, with massive white banners embroidered with a white dragon. All of Fhirdiad was now that dragon's lair; Sylvain knew in his gut that Edelgard was right, and while he and his friends awaited trial for desertion, the Immaculate One had donned her human skin once more and retreated to Faerghus in order to transform it into her new state.

He didn't know if it was a mistake to come back there, but he still had hope that Dimitri would listen to them.

There was a knock at the door, but it was only a knock of courtesy. Sylvain turned to look as the door creaked open, revealing a number of knights clad in white, helmed by Gilbert Pronislav himself. Sylvain looked at his ugly mug and found himself smiling. Sylvain knew that every single time Gilbert looked at him, he was thinking about how his daughter had turned against the Kingdom and now fought for the Empire. Wherever Annette was in the Empire, Sylvain hoped she was ready for the fight.

"Seems a little overkill to have one of Faerghus' greatest knights delivering my dinner," Sylvain said, as though he had not seen the manacles hanging from Gilbert's hand.

"I am here to fetch you for your audience with the Archbishop," Gilbert said, his voice low and judgemental. (Typical.) He held up the manacles. "Present your hands."

Sylvain got up off the windowsill and strode over. He was not keen to be shackled, but he was ready to mete out his fate, whether he was to be executed or merely imprisoned for the rest of his life. He offered his wrists to Gilbert, and Gilbert closed the wrought iron bands around them. Gilbert locked the pin that held them shut, and then pulled against them experimentally. Sylvain tried to move with them but he ended up jerked around for his trouble.

"Ow," Sylvain said, as he was taken by the cuffs and then dragged out the door. His courage swelled up in his gut and blustered out his mouth: "Hey, is Rhea wearing our colours now? I think she'd look gorgeous in blue. Absolutely radiant— ow!"

When he was a child, Sylvain had been plagued by a persistent stomachache. He wasn’t sure what it was, other than uncomfortable, and it often put him off his dinner. His parents didn’t know what to make of it either. One physician said it was a weak constitution. Another wanted him to wear an amulet. A third said he was eating foods too intense for his young body. He’d been made to stop eating salt, spices, and vinegars in turns, as physicians pondered what had caused such his relentless aches. He’d been dosed with all sorts of things: coca wine, soothing syrups, honeys and garlics. It happened whether he ate or not. It was a mystery.

His parents had been beside themselves with frustration. How could it be that their baby boy, their pride and joy, the future of House Gautier, could be plagued by such a simple thing? Would more problems emerge over the years, until he was crippled completely? What would happen to their noble house?

In the end, the stomachaches just went away. They abated over a series of weeks, weeks in which nothing particularly exciting or special happened; young Sylvain studied with his tutors, played with his friends, rode his pony in the glen, and practiced his footwork, and then one morning he realized he was free. He never had another stomachache.

What _had_ changed was Miklan. He was sent to Garreg Mach for a year, and in the depths of his trunk, packed amongst his clothes and trinkets and various other possessions, he'd taken the constant, low hum of fear he’d inflicted over Sylvain for as long as he remembered.

Sylvain had never given it much thought. As he grew older and became a man, he’d almost entirely forgotten about the stomachaches, and he put Miklan behind him. He grew into his own, and felt stable in who he was, and his future seemed set in stone. He forgot, as children tend to.

It flooded back as he entered the throne room.

He couldn’t do anything about it right then, but it did feel like the last thing he needed. Though his stomach wrenched in a way that made him want to hurl, to show weakness or nervousness or shrink back at _all_ would be inviting scrutiny. Confidence would be key.

He was led up to the front of the crowd and put in line with Ingrid and Felix. His stomach untwisted and then knotted itself up again at the sight of them. They both looked well but nervous. Ingrid's expression was far less ruled than his own; her eyebrows pinched, her eyes a little glassy. Sylvain just smiled at her tersely, and as subtly as he could, he leant towards her and bumped the back of his hand to hers. Their knuckles brushed and his manacles clanked against hers, and both withdrew just as quickly. He knew it was risky, but it made him feel the slightest bit better. On his other side, Felix was steeled, his jaw set. He looked straight ahead of them, unblinking. It made Sylvain a little more nervous again. None of them were armed, but he could imagine Felix racing up the aisle, fists at the ready to fight his way out.

That would be an impossibility. They would not be able to fight their way out, even if they weren’t chained. Every eye was on then. The whole trial was for them, after all.

“Prince Dimitri,” the Archbishop said, breaking the silence.

She stood upon the dais at the front of the hall, and she seemed to Sylvain to be the coldest creature Fhirdiad had ever known. While the rest of court still wore the dense layers appropriate to the rainy season, she was clad in a sleek dress, and a shimmering cape corded with gold thread and embroidered stars. Her porcelain features were displeased, and in the past Sylvain might have overlooked that in favour of the curves of her body, but now he was sure he would never see her as beautiful again. He just imagined her jaws dripping with saliva off great curved teeth, and a reptilian crackle to her skin.

Dimitri stood up from the line of seats to their left, and he walked ahead of them as though he were their human shield. Sylvain watched the back of his head, and the hard line of his shoulders. Dimitri seemed remarkably calm — almost too calm.

“I understand that this has been a difficult month for you,” the Archbishop said. “You’ve been keeping long hours, and I have scarcely seen you without a pen in your hand. Your dedication to your friends is admirable, and twice now you have delayed our decision, but you understand that our compassion cannot be extended to traitors, especially with new perils threatening us.”

That was it. Sylvain’s stomach turned entirely. Dimitri stepped forward quickly, and he produced a sheaf of letters from the front of his waistcoat. He held them before him as though they were a weapon.

“I understand, Archbishop,” he said, a deep undercurrent of frustration clear under his firm voice. “Here I have no fewer than twenty letters from members of Faerghus’s nobility, and in them, representatives of all of the great houses have vouched for the dignity and release of these three.”

“Do you not think that if they could betray the church, they could betray their own families?” the Archbishop asked. Her voice was crystal clear in the silent hall, and Sylvain watched Dimitri shrink back for a second before advancing on the stairs of the dais.

“I maintain their innocence,” he insisted. “I have known them since we were children, and never have they expressed any sentiments or thoughts against the Holy Kingdom, or her church.”

The Archbishop started to reply, but Dimitri barrelled on:

“In the month you have held them, they have made no effort to rebel or escape. They have made no demands but to be freed from their confines and permitted to move around the castle. I believe them when they say that they had no say in the matter of the Holy Tomb — they are victims of Edelgard’s rebellion. We should be relieved, even, that they were able to escape and return to us!”

Once more the Archbishop moved as if to reply, but once more, Dimitri continued, louder and more passionate still:

"If we are to war, my friends' lives are not negotiable," he said, "not as long as we wish to maintain the loyalty of the Eastern houses!"

For a moment, the Archbishop Rhea said nothing. Sylvain felt words dance on the tip of his tongue, but he said nothing. He heard Felix make a soft sound, something indecipherable, and when he glanced aside, Sylvain found Felix smiling. Sylvain wanted to throttle him. Now was not the time to be smiling.

Felix was going to get them killed, if Dimitri’s temper didn’t first.

Sylvain found it difficult to not speak up; anyone in this kind of situation would, standing before someone with enough power to act as judge, jury and executioner. In the past month, he’d been left to fantasize about what was waiting for them when Rhea finally addressed them: he had trusted that their fathers would intervene, and that they would rally the entire kingdom behind their sons and daughter. He hoped to the very core of his being that Dimitri’s efforts in uniting them would be enough.

It seemed like a difficult task to Sylvain. After all, the Archbishop had a vested interest in having all three of them bent over a basket and decapitated. In the damp darkness of the Holy Tomb, they had all seen her, massive and serpentine and thrashing in the dark. Her great jaw capable of crushing a man’s chest, her skin as jagged and creviced as a mountain face.

They knew who she was.

The Archbishop looked at him, at Sylvain. For the brief moment they made eye contact, Sylvain felt she knew the truth.

The only thing standing between his neck and a blade was that the Church needed Faerghus for protection, and the people of Faerghus would not be so welcoming if the Archbishop’s first act was to execute the future leaders of half its territory. After all: the Empire was not waging war on Faerghus. If they declined to take on her defense, she would have to try her luck in the Alliance, and even without Edelgard’s instruction, Sylvain knew that would be unlikely.

It felt perilous to say that it was all he knew after a month of imprisonment: the same things Edelgard had told him would happen.

The Archbishop glanced at Seteth, who stepped forward to accept Dimitri’s collection of letters. The pile was so thick that it took both of his hands to keep them together. She looked back to Dimitri.

“I will review them,” the Archbishop said. “And as a show of good faith, I will permit the accused to move around the castle while we determine the best course of action.”

A collective sigh of relief rose up amongst the people of court. Sylvain sighed himself. Ingrid was so loud that he thought she had expired on the spot. Felix said nothing. He didn’t even flinch.

Dimitri bowed very low. Sylvain, Ingrid and Felix did the same.

“Thank you, Lady Rhea,” Dimitri said.

The Archbishop smiled serenely. She knew she had just bestowed their lives upon them, and that her graciousness would be appreciated.

“Conduct yourself wisely,” she warned. “We are in dangerous times. We cannot risk more snakes in our midst.”

_ You’re the snake,_ Sylvain thought. _A big fuck-off dragon sort of snake._

“You are dismissed,” she said.

Dimitri bowed again and turned. For a halting second, he looked at the three of them, and he waited for them to bow before gesturing for them to exit. They all turned and walked out down the same aisle they’d come in. Ingrid and Felix kept their eyes ahead of them, but Sylvain exercised his new freedom by casting his gaze over the people gathered. He could see Felix and Ingrid’s fathers, but he did not see his own. He didn’t know why.

At the door, Gilbert blocked their paths. He held a ring of keys, and one by one, Felix, Ingrid and Sylvain offered their manacled wrists to be unshackled. While he had scarcely been wearing them for half an hour, it was a relief to feel the weight drop away. Sylvain itched to rub at his skin, but Gilbert paused before inserting the other key.

“I always thought it was strange that the three of you transferred to the Black Eagles, one after the other,” Gilbert intoned in that humourless voice. “With your coronation just around the corner, you should be most careful, Prince Dimitri. A king is expected to stand strong on crime and punishment.”

He turned the key and undid the second manacle without even looking at Sylvain. His attention was squarely on Dimitri, who smiled.

“I appreciate your concern,” he said, “but they fight for a just cause. This whole regrettable matter will be over before long.”

Sylvain hoped so. He didn’t think his stomach would last long otherwise.

Though Sylvain would have loved to spirit Dimitri away to the border the first moment they got, their work had only just begun. It was also surprisingly difficult to leap headfirst into business: Sylvain, Felix and Ingrid had each spent a month confined to single rooms at the top of a tower, denied most contact with the outside world and deprived of information. On one hand, Sylvain had to get the lay of the land, as he did not want to misstep and render the whole thing fruitless. On the other hand, he desperately wanted to touch the ground, and eat something that wasn’t cold leftovers from the dinner service, and have even one scrap of human contact.

Dimitri led them out into a courtyard. It was the same courtyard that they had played in as children, the one with three big paper birch trees — the last of what had been a whole collection planted around the years they were all born. Ingrid gasped in joy as they hit the cool spring air, and Sylvain didn’t think. He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her with a big whoop of relief, and Ingrid laughed as he spun her around. To touch another person was overwhelmingly good, but he set her down and moved to Felix, who stood as rigid as a board. Sylvain crowded him anyway, and he held Felix in an exuberant hug, kissed his cheek and let out more whoops, just for the sake of hearing his own voice ring out in the sky. Felix did not budge, but did concede to patting Ingrid's back when she burst into a brief fit of overwhelmed tears against his shoulder.

Sylvain looked to Dimitri. He was watching them with some faint amusement. It was the first time Sylvain had really seen him back in clothes more befitting a Faerghus prince than the officer’s academy had provided, and it made him feel something funny in the pit of his gut. The four of them in this courtyard — it really was like being a child again, but this time they all had blood on their hands. They were about to have more, if the war wasn't diverted.

Sylvain and Dimitri held each others’ gaze for a moment, and Sylvain marched over to Dimitri. He put his arms around Dimitri’s neck and held him. Dimitri gave a quiet_ oof _despite scarcely being jostled, and after a moment, he awkwardly pat Sylvain’s back. Sylvain buried his nose in Dimitri’s fur collar, and he felt Ingrid meet Dimitri’s other side.

“That wasn’t exactly the greeting I was expecting after that year at Garreg Mach,” Dimitri said.

“It’s the one you deserve,” Sylvain said, and he drew back just a bit. “You saved our lives, at least for now.”

“Hopefully for good, at least where the Church is concerned,” Dimitri said. He sounded relieved, too. “I wish we could have talked, but if she knew I was speaking with you directly...”

“She would question you more than she already is,” Ingrid said, worriedly.

Dimitri nodded. It filled Sylvain with some strength and joy to know that Dimitri had just spent the past four weeks saving their lives, after all, entirely on the assumption that they were still his friends. It gave Sylvain a great deal of hope, too. He thought that if Dimitri was vouching for them, they could protect him in return.

Sylvain could feel Felix watching them with growing frustration, but he didn’t want to invite trouble by pointing it out.

“And the Archbishop has plenty of reason to question those who lean too readily on their ties to Garreg Mach,” Dimitri said, seriously. “She is determined to take it back before long, but Edelgard has spent the past month fortifying the Empire’s presence at our borders... it will not be easy.”

“Is Faerghus going to march with her?” Ingrid asked.

Sylvain felt his breath catch at the back of his throat.

“Of course,” Dimitri said. “We would have marched a week ago, but I refused to declare war until Lady Rhea agreed to consider you three for pardon. Your houses have powerful armies we'll need at our disposal, after all.”

Ingrid put a hand to her mouth. Sylvain hoped that she looked grateful rather than perturbed and spoke quickly just in case.

“But you want to go to war?” Sylvain asked. Dimitri frowned, so Sylvain added: “Edelgard really thinks she can invade Faerghus? Conquer Fhirdiad?”

“If Rhea’s here, she surely will,” Dimitri said, “Edelgard has never been one to hold back.”

It felt like a great leap for Edelgard to head straight for the capitol, but then again, she had gone straight for Rhea at Garreg Mach, too — twice. Sylvain knew her back-up plans were extensive, ever-malleable, ever-prepared to deal with her opponents.

“You don’t think we can talk to her first? I mean, she’s intense, but that’s just... crazy.”

“I have no interest in speaking with Edelgard,” he said, “She means to trap us. She has offered to lay down her arms if we turn Rhea over to her, but it's a lie like every other.”

There was something about the way that he said _Edelgard_ that made Sylvain hesitate. There was a crispness to it, an edge that came out through his teeth and landed like he were calling her something else. Sylvain studied him. Dimitri seemed very calm on the outside, but there was something else shoring up deep down. Sylvain let Dimitri go, standing back.

The door opened. All of them turned to look. Dedue stood in the doorway, and his usually stern face softened slightly when they met eyes. He just as quickly turned his attention to Dimitri.

“Your Highness,” he said. “Lady Rhea wishes to have a private audience with you. And Felix, Ingrid — your parents wish to see you, as well.”

“Oh,” Dimitri said. He glanced back at the lot of them. Dimitri said: “We must go, then. Perhaps we can eat dinner together tonight in my rooms and catch up?”

Sylvain nodded.

Dimitri turned and left with Dedue. Sylvain parted his lips to say something, but they still weren't alone. There were a few knights out in the courtyard, and though they were in conversation with each other, one was facing them, and Sylvain thought that behind their helmet, they were watching the three of them. Sylvain did not feel they could have even a low conversation without taking a significant risk.

He reached out and put a hand on each of his friends.

"Go see your parents now," Sylvain said. "Let's meet someplace later to talk."

_Someplace_ was agreed to be their old hiding place: the stables, in the fifth stall in the last row.

That stall had been the site of many clandestine meetings. During their summers in Fhirdiad when their fathers were summoned to court and their children dragged along, there would be numerous causes to escape: bad tutoring sessions, simple boredom, or the need to discuss some sort of prank or plan. Sylvain, the eldest and wisest, had picked it. His dearest little friends had not had much choice in the matter, but it had rapidly been adopted as their rendezvous point. When in trouble or in doubt, meet at the stables.

The stables hadn't changed much since their childhood either; it was a cavernous structure that housed hundreds of horses, and so it was easy to slink around unheard. Sylvain got there first, taking the back entrance and stopping to pet the more agreeable horses here or there. The stablehands paid little attention to him, and the horses just kept munching dutifully on their hay. Sylvain let himself into their designated stall. It was empty, save for some clean hay, which he sat down in and sighed.

He wished it felt relieving to be in a familiar place, but all he felt was dread.

The sooner they could convince Dimitri of Rhea's deception, the better.

Ingrid arrived shortly after, her face red and her eyes teary. Sylvain gave her a sympathetic look, and she let herself into the stall and sat down beside him.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

"My father is furious," she said. "He told me my 'stunt' with the Black Eagles has driven off any potential suitors, and now there doesn't seem to be any hope for our family… he doesn't know what to do. I told him I didn't care about suitors, and that we were on the cusp of open war— augh. I…"

She trailed, wiping at her eyes. Sylvain put an arm around her and she leant against him and was quiet for a moment.

"What about your father?" she asked, finally.

"No idea. He's in Gautier," Sylvain said. "Apparently, he didn't even answer the last few letters from Dimitri; I guess he's just that mad and needs some time to cool off. I'll write to him tonight and smooth things over."

Ingrid nodded.

"Mine's charming as always," Felix chipped in, appearing at the door. The stall door was so tall that Felix could rest his nose on its edge without stooping much. Ingrid beckoned him to come in before someone noticed him, and Felix did so. He sat down opposite them. "I've shamed my family, too, but the fool didn't say as much. He just lectured me on duty and honour."

"Nice guy, your father," Sylvain remarked.

"Yours too," Felix said. "My father says your old man plans to beat you within an inch of your life. I hope you're ready to make him work for it."

Sylvain shook his head. He didn't want to say it, but that prospect put a pit in his stomach even deeper than war, or heresy, or destroying the nobility. He avoided Felix's searching look. He didn't want to talk about that, lest his courage up and leave him entirely.

"Hm," Ingrid hummed. "Maybe we should talk about what we plan to do to stop Dimitri from taking in the Church."

"It's a little late for that," Felix said. He shifted so he could lean up against the wall of the stall, but he gave it a cursory glance first, as if he expected it to be dirty. The whitewashing was just peeling. "Did you hear the way he talked about her? He doesn't care about us half as much as he cares about having our houses' support. He _wants_ to go to war against her. I've never seen him so aroused."

"I know what you're saying," Sylvain said, "but there's got to be a better word than that."

"Could you be serious, please?" Ingrid asked, elbowing Sylvain in the side.

"_Provoked_, then," Felix said, tersely. "My old man said that he blames her for Duscur. He didn't go into much detail, and I gather nobody thinks it's true… but no one's trying to convince him otherwise, either."

"Why not?" Ingrid said. Sylvain felt that query deeply, but his stomach was already turning knots. He sank back into the hay, his arm flopping from Ingrid's shoulders, and his long legs stretched out to bump Felix's. Why not? Why not? _Why—_

"They don't care what his excuse is," Felix said, "as long as he goes to war against the Empire."

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

“And we have to tread carefully on that subject,” Ingrid said, “because the church will use any excuse it can to execute us as traitors.”

“Well, we need more people on our side,” Sylvain said. “People who won’t immediately be suspected as traitors. For every step we take towards convincing Dimitri this is wrong, there’ll be a hundred people waiting to pull him backwards, towards war… but... _why_ do they want war?"

He watched a lump move in Felix's throat as he swallowed his breath. Ingrid said nothing, her hand over her mouth, her overlong blonde bangs falling into her eyes. Sylvain knew the answer. He knew that Faerghus' corruption ran deep, and that war was the perfect time to wrest control from the trembling survivors of the Blaiddyd family line, and reforge the crumbling kingdom in a new image.

He thought of his father, wanting to beat him black and blue for having embarrassed their family, and the inevitability of it all: hadn't he grown up watching Miklan getting beaten, pummelled to the ground and dragged across the stones for having the audacity to talk back, to demand different, to criticize their way of life? Hadn't he grown up knowing that someday, Miklan wouldn't be there anymore, his father would use any means necessary to keep him toeing the line, too? Hadn't he grown up knowing if he didn't do something to change the world he lived in, he would have to become one with it?

How could he live in that world, especially now that he’d been promised a new one?

Those thoughts just made him feel more lily-livered than before. Sylvain grit his teeth. That was wrong. It was supposed to inspire him, give him courage. He took a deep breath.

"We're going to stop this," he said. "I don't care if it gets me killed. Dimitri is a good man, and they're taking advantage of him. He deserves a chance to do for Faerghus what Edelgard is doing for Adrestia. We can't… we can't let our parents decide what Faerghus should be for us. It's ours, it's our future…"

He trailed. He felt like he was going to cry, but there was no time for that.

"We have to try."

Felix nodded. So did Ingrid, and then she raised her head. Sylvain heard it too; someone was coming. Sylvain slowly rose to his feet, stooping so he was still largely out of sight. He ducked again quickly when he saw a knight passing by.

The three of them waited with bated breath as the knight slowed, almost as if he'd noticed them, but then he carried on. Sylvain slowly sat back down, and they all waited in silence for the knight to get far enough away to not hear them.

"We should go," Felix murmured. "We don't want to be seen together too much, too quickly, at least in private."

"Agreed," Ingrid said. "Let's find out more about what's going on and meet again in a couple days."

"Here?"

"No, maybe not," Sylvain said. "Sneak into my room just after midnight. We'll talk there."

Ingrid and Felix both nodded. Ingrid rose to her feet, too. Felix did not. He lingered, blocking the door. Sylvain looked down at him, concerned about what he was about to hear, and Felix just looked up at him with moody eyes. His mouth was pursed. There was something floating on the tip of his tongue. _Out with it,_ Sylvain said, with a glance.

“You understand that we are about to be put to war against the people we believe in?” Felix said. “Faerghus is going to send us to the front lines, and we'll have to face down our classmates. They can’t hesitate, and nor can we, because if we do...”

“It’ll be reason for Rhea to kill us,” Sylvain said. “I know. What do you think I’ve been thinking about all these weeks? We all knew that was a possibility. We just didn’t... we didn’t expect that the church would have a month’s head start.”

“Not a month. We gave them almost a _year_,” Felix said. “All three of us conceded that by transferring.”

“But if we hadn’t transferred,” Ingrid said, “we’d be on the wrong side.”

“Aren't we?” Felix asked.

None of them said anything. They didn't need to.

Sylvain did not regret leaving the Blue Lions. His life wouldn't have taken this wild trajectory if he hadn't, but just the idea of not knowing the truth about the Church of Seiros was suffocating. He wished, however, that he had done more. His efforts to convince Felix, Ingrid and Annette to transfer had been inadequate.

He should have tried to convince _everyone, _including Dimitri.

Just months ago, they had been friends at school. Now, it felt like they were something else.

That feeling blanketed him in every conversation. He was being watched, even in the company of friends. Mercedes and Ashe made him both dinner and dessert that second night out of house arrest, and he endured a couple hours of casual chatter that steered firmly away from politics and faith in favour of trite things like life in the castle and places they wanted to visit. Sylvain generally considered pleasantries and idle chatter one of his specialties, but he itched to grab them and shake them by their shoulders, to scream in their face: _you will see those places! And it won't be beautiful or relaxing or amazing, because it'll be war! It'll be _war_! _But he didn't.

Mercedes was wary of the goddess, but she loved the Church. She would never turn against them. She and Annette had also parted on bad terms. Sylvain imagined the rift had only gotten deeper, and thoughts of Annette would not sway her to the Empire's cause. And Ashe, Sylvain reasoned, was not going to believe anything he said. Not even the execution of his adopted father could shake Ashe’s faith in the church — he had only become more devout after Lonato's death at the church's hands. _Their _hands. Sylvain had been scarcely fifty feet away when he'd watched Lonato's head cleaved clean from his shoulders. What had he done to stop Catherine? Nothing. What had he done to stop Rhea? Defied her by keeping the Lance of Ruin?

He should have started earlier. He should have tried harder. If only he'd known, if only Edelgard had _told him_, he would have made it his life's work just to avoid this.

He walked the long staircase from the foot of the west tower to his quarters, hands in his pockets, heart in his throat. A short distance up he realized he was being tailed, and none too subtly at that. Sylvain paused mid-step to look back over his shoulder. The knight was only half a flight behind him, and his helmet obscured his face entirely. He stopped when Sylvain did.

“Hey man,” Sylvain said, “If you gotta follow me around, so be it, I know you’re acting on orders. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t get in my way with girls.”

“Excuse me?” the knight asked.

“I mean,” Sylvain clarified, “girls find it creepy when some guy is looming around with a full helmet on, and if they’re not comfortable, it throws me off.”

The knight said nothing, so after a moment of awkward silence, Sylvain carried on up the stairs. The knight continued to follow him, his steel-clad boots tapping against the stone. Sylvain listened to it carefully; he could tell that the knight was drawing closer to him, and that made him nervous. He looked back again. The knight stopped again.

“I can’t tell if you’re the same knight as before,” Sylvain said, “Have you been following me since I got out?”

He thought of the moment in the stable. He hoped he hadn’t given something away if he was wrong, but the knight didn’t seem to give any indication of that. The knight just started towards him, reaching for his belt. Sylvain steeled himself. He was unarmed, so all he could do was ready his fists in his own defence.

But the knight pulled a letter from under his hip armour. It was just a piece of paper folded over twice, scarcely the size of a playing card.

He offered it to Sylvain.

Sylvain frowned. He looked the knight up and down for any sign of something wrong, but he looked like any knight. Fresh off of house arrest, he didn’t feel particularly inclined to reveal himself as the kind of person who accepted clandestine letters.

“I have a letter for you,” the knight said, as if Sylvain might have misunderstood. His voice was surprisingly boyish under that helmet.

“From who?”

The knight just continued to hold it out.

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain said, “but I’m not accepting anything if I don’t know who it’s from. You can tell me or you can take a hike.”

“It's from the first player,” the knight replied.

Sylvain pursed his lips for a moment, looking at the letter in the knight's outstretched hand. Sylvain reached out to take it, fully expecting to be jumped by knights hiding just around the corner, but nothing happened. Sylvain tucked the letter into the waistband of his trousers immediately. It was not comfortable in the slightest, but he wasn’t sure if it was the folded paper or the prospect of getting caught with it.

The knight turned to go.

Sylvain watched him for a second and then startled and ran after him.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, and the knight stopped. Standing that close, Sylvain could see the slivers of the knight’s brown eyes behind the slits in the mask. Sylvain dropped his voice to a mutter: “How do I send a letter back?”

“I’ll check in on you periodically,” the knight said. “I’ll be watching. If you need me, you’ll find me.”

“No, no,” Sylvain insisted. “If I have to send something, that’s too... that’s too risky. I can’t tell who you are in your armour, and I’ll be stuck waiting if you’re assigned elsewhere and don’t have an excuse to get to me.”

The knight hesitated. Sylvain’s brain churned. He didn’t have much on his person beyond the clothes on his back, and with a heavy heart he settled on his family ring. He pulled it off and pressed it into the knight’s hand.

“Return this to me when you have a message,” he said. “If anyone asks why you’re headed to me, say you found it. It has my crest, it’s mine. You're doing me a favour.”

The knight nodded, just once.

“And when I have a letter for you,” Sylvain said, “I’m going to...”

He trailed, scrubbing at his hair with a hand as he thought, and then he had that, too.

“I don’t know. I’ll wear my old school pin, the Blue Lions one. You see me with a little lapel pin, I have a letter for you.”

“Very well,” the knight agreed, and he pocketed the ring.

“Thanks,” Sylvain said, and lacking anything else to do, he clapped the knight on the shoulder and then walked away.

When he reached his room, he shut the door behind him and grabbed the chair from the writing desk and wedged the back under the door handle. He fished the letter out of his trousers and stood in the middle of the room. He unfolded it. He breathed a long sigh of relief at the sight of Edelgard’s careful, diligent handwriting, a single sentence:

_ Co-ordinates from our last playing session._

A series of coordinates followed. Sylvain had no idea what to make of them at first, but he thought of the myriad of games that he had played with Edelgard and Hubert over the years. While they all used the same grid board and similar pieces, coordinates didn’t tell him which rules to play by. He would have to run through a number of them.

He did not have a board game, so he fetched his pen. Lacking paper, he picked up his journal and tore out a page. He drew out the grid, as wide as the page allowed, and his hand shook with so much anticipation that his lines grew crooked with the stroke of his nib. Sylvain checked the coordinates, marking off spots. One by one, he marked off pieces, Xes for one team and Os for the other, and he found them more or less lined up on each side of the board. Some pieces had moved forward a space or two, but the war had only just begun.

But three pieces, he noticed, were not where they should be. They were behind enemy lines, nestled in with their opponents. Sylvain double-checked the list of coordinates. He was not incorrect. He looked at their positions. Two knights and a rook. The rook had castled the king.

Sylvain sat in the middle of his floor and stared at the paper. That there were people on the outside looking out for them. He'd known that all along, and yet there it was, in his hand.

For the first time since he stepped foot back in Faerghus, a prisoner and a would-be revolutionary and a traitor and a man of his word, Sylvain wept.


	22. Blow After Blow

** **

In the coming week, Ingrid went right back to the work she’d been doing before they arrived, leaving the castle at dawn and seldom returning before sundown. Keeping the city in order, Sylvain heard. Overseeing rebuilding. Quelling disputes. Intervening on street brawls and clashes. Restoring good will towards Faerghus' governing body — the skeleton that remained of the old order, and the new blood coming in from Adrestia. Aside from forbidding either of them to leave the castle without her escort, she largely ignored them, disappearing off with new friends or up to her room to sleep.

He wasn't surprised, but it still hurt.

Felix, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind. He made no overtures towards leaving, instead content to do drills in the courtyard and ponder the universe in relative quiet. Sylvain couldn't even hope to distract himself that much. He felt like a stray dog. He found himself peeking around corners to see if Ingrid was in a room before entering, and if she was, he slunk in and didn’t speak until she acknowledged him. At meals, he sat between soldiers on the long mess hall benches and waited for scraps of conversation. He thought he’d be cast out if he imposed any more than he already did by merely existing, which struck him as somewhat amusing — on two occasions, he saw _actual_ stray dogs nosing through the castle with more confidence than he felt.

He itched to just go out and visit the city and do whatever he pleased, but he knew he couldn’t test the waters of rebellion with Ingrid just yet. She was still angry, and he knew no amount of good-natured ribbing and self-depreciating humour could undo the damage he’d caused.

He would just have to wait for her to be ready to talk to him.

Still, it drove him insane to wait and have almost nothing to distract himself with. Dimitri’s quarters had been walled off with many layers of brick and mortar, and with so few soldiers available to do non-priority tasks, the process of breaking it down had apparently only started that morning. Ingrid also wasn't about to trust him with any duties. Faced with nothing to do, Sylvain generally would happily make his own entertainment, but it was next to impossible in the castle. Fhirdiad castle had all but forgotten creature comforts and was more concerned with survival than joy — the library was thinned out, the lounges had been stripped of anything resembling leisure. There were no easy targets to sleep with given his reputation, and there was no getting drunk with either of his friends watching him. Linhardt was no fun. Ingrid didn’t want to pal around with him, and he couldn’t take one more conversation with Felix about how much of a lost cause Fhirdiad was.

At least going without sex was something he could solve himself. Despite sharing a bed with Felix (and the regrettable lack of interested women) he could always furiously masturbate in quiet stairwells or empty rooms, which he did whenever he had an opportunity. It made him feel like a boy again, spotting a few inches of cleavage on a passing woman and rushing to the nearest quiet alcove to jerk himself off. It was somehow less amusing as a grown man, and a whole lot more pathetic, but it was something.

The real problem was that there was no alternative to drinking.

He couldn’t _not_ drink.

Alcohol permeated his life the same way women did, after all. He could no sooner avoid alcohol than he could avoid half the population, and he was not the sort of person who survived well in isolation. He couldn’t imagine not drinking. Wine was not common in Fhirdiad, not in these times, and even if he stopped drinking beer, the types of places he liked to go to socialize still did not serve weak drinks, and ciders and meads and metheglin were even stronger still than a decent ale. One did not drink water. Women did not enjoy opening up over a glass of water. Not even children drank water, though they did use it to cut their already weak ale. Water was for horses and the poorest of the poor, and even then, the poor would prefer to mask a souring ale with pepper or egg yolks. Water was what you drank from a pump or stream when you had no other choice. Sylvain had lived like a poor man, but not _that_ kind of poor, and if you _were_ that poor, the cloudy water from city wells in poorer districts stood pretty good odds at killing you. Sylvain had once settled on working for brothels _because_ women and drink flowed liberally, and he wasn’t going to find those two things as a common labourer.

And in a city like Fhirdiad, with disease outbreaks ravaging the people in cycles, Sylvain found it very difficult to imagine himself drinking the often foul-tasting water. Was he supposed to just risk illness like that? He didn’t know what to do when Ingrid threw him dirty, disbelieving looks for having a glass of ale with dinner, or how to defend himself when he had a second or third, too. He wasn't getting drunk and he was being careful about that, so what else did she want from him? Sylvain accepted he had a problem with drinking the same way he accepted he had a problem with women, but it was starkly better from the problem he _used_ to have. It was demoralizing to be treated as though he never did anything right. He wasn’t the man he’d been years ago in Gautier. Was he just supposed to stop enjoying himself entirely?

Ingrid evidently didn’t share his sentiments. She saw a couple glasses of ale the same way one might spot an enemy scout, and she raised all the defences in preparation for a full-on assault from a looming army. It put Felix in an odd position, too — he’d never known Sylvain at his worst, and yet he approached the news without even the slightest bit of shock. That was insulting to Sylvain, and being annoyed about it buoyed the shame that threatened to drag him under.

_If it weren't for wanting to be with you I would have just flipped Edelgard off and gotten another brothel job,_ he thought, accusingly. _And nobody there would judge me, or punish me, or ignore me, and if I didn't like it, I would just leave on my own._

But, suffice to say, he still had to admit to himself, it did have _something_ to do with his abject, eternal unhappiness. Unfortunately, he didn't know what _would_ make him happy, especially not in Fhirdiad. He was left with nothing to do with his days but sit at the window in his room and gaze out over the city, which didn’t ease his mood much. That morning, he watched a burial procession of sorts — a horse and hearse was passing through one of the few streets he could properly see.

_Look at yourself,_ he thought. Everything he'd seen during the war, and he still thought he had it harder than the innocent people who had died in it. The people who were still dying from it.

Sylvain was already tired of himself for comparing everything to how it had been during the war, but the examples made themselves. While swords and lances had largely been set aside, the bodies of Faerghus were still ravaged by famine and disease, and so death still lurked beyond the castle walls. He could tell just watching the hearse. Now it held a single casket, but during the war, the hearses had been so full that the dead weren't even in caskets, just in shrouds. Lacking the time and manpower to efficiently bury so many dead, the remains would be piled into trenches as deep as a house. There would be some service by a priest, with no particular man, woman or child given any special attention, and then the dirt would be shovelled atop the bodies. The next weekend, the dirt would be removed again, and then the new bodies would be dumped atop the previous ones, and the priest would begin anew. That had carried on until the grave was full and a new one needed to be dug. Sometimes it wasn’t quite dug in time. The stench was enough to curl one’s nose hairs.

Sylvain had thought it disgusting, but he had grown up hearing stories about the great plague that Lady Cornelia had vanquished. Stories softened the surprise for him, and living in the castle had given him a safe bit of distance. No matter how miserable it had been to live inside its walls, he thought it best not to complain about his fortune in life, even if he seldom felt fortunate.

The Fhirdiad he’d seen outside his window then had been an ugly place. The Fhirdiad he saw now was no more beautiful, but being razed by the Immaculate One’s torching had at least changed its face enough that Sylvain could look at it and not feel like he was trapped in a memory.

The whole city felt as though it were built on the bones of something lost. _He_ felt like he was built on someone else’s bones.

“It seems nicer, all things considered,” Felix muttered.

Sylvain tore his gaze from the window. Felix was spread out on the floor, meticulously cleaning his gear. He had two swords and two knives, and his baldric and leather shoulder armour had a whole assortment of buttons and buckles to polish and shine.

“The city,” Felix clarified. “But it––“

“But it’s still a disaster,” Sylvain said. “Yeah, I _know_. Can you put that away? The oil smells.”

“If I have to put up with you opening the window, then you have to put up with the smell,” Felix informed him. “Maybe living in the south has addled your memories, because here in Fhirdiad it’s _winter_.”

So it was. It was just nearing the dead of it, and both of them were fully dressed in their winter clothes despite being inside. Even with the window closed, the fireplace struggled to keep the room at a tolerable temperature. Sylvain sighed and closed the window; the wooden frame ground in its tracks and got stuck at the last inch, but Sylvain forced it down and gave Felix a pointed look. Felix sighed and started packing up.

“You heading back soon?” Sylvain asked. He didn’t want to bring it up, but Felix hadn’t said anything, and Sylvain didn’t feel like being surprised one morning. “I mean, you’re welcome to stay. I promise not to hog the blankets anymore.”

Felix scoffed, but it sounded a little bit like a laugh, too.

“The day the bricks come out of Dimitri’s doorway, I’m leaving,” he said.

“I guess that’s my cue to go down with a trowel and patch it back up, then,” Sylvain said. He said it lightly, but Felix didn’t even smile. Sylvain itched to yell at him: _I care about you too, you know!_

“I thought you wanted to make things right,” Felix said.

Sylvain grimaced. He did, but he didn’t appreciate having it thrown in his face, especially not if he risked Felix getting the impression that it was an either-or situation. It wasn’t.

“I do,” Sylvain said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Felix leant back on his hands on the floor. “I just think it wouldn’t kill you to stick around. That’s all.”

“You just want a buffer between you and Ingrid,” Felix said.

“So?” he said. There was no point in denying it. That was a tactic he’d learned from Miklan; his father was less likely to scream and shout at Miklan if Sylvain was present, and Sylvain had accepted being used as a pawn as long as it kept some modicum of harmony. He was wrong to think it would work the same way with Felix and Ingrid, of course, but he hadn’t expected to be _that_ wrong. He carried on: “I can want that and also want my best friend around. You make me out to be such an asshole sometimes.”

Felix rolled his eyes away. It wasn’t like him to favour his words, but he didn’t need to say anything at all. He’d said it a thousand times over their lives already: Sylvain _was_ an asshole. There was no making out any other meaning, just a cool, crisp reality. Sylvain sighed.

“Come on,” Sylvain said, letting his voice get a little cloying. “She’s so _pissed_, Felix. If you leave, she’s going to spit roast me and feed me to the people, and then you’ll have my blood on your hands.”

“You shouldn’t have done whatever you did to her, then,” Felix said.

“Ugh,” Sylvain replied. "I didn't _do_ anything _to _her, I just… she had to put up with a lot."

Sylvain flopped back on the bed. He didn’t want to think about resolving things with Ingrid; he still didn’t know what to say, or how to explain himself, or how to apologize in a way that didn’t sound like a laundry list of wrongdoings with no real demonstration of how he’d changed. He hadn’t changed, he'd just gotten better at hiding it, and then what would the point of the apology be?

Once, he'd told himself that if he survived the war, and if he survived Dimitri, he would be a principled man. He'd lived, and he still wasn't. He wasn’t surprised. Miklan had tried to kill him countless times as well, and he wasn't convinced that any of it had made him sweeter, or more grateful, or more appreciative of his lot in life. Sure, each time he had been overwhelmed by joy for having survived, and for a time, life had burst with colour. He had indulged in things that a coddled man might have been embarrassed to do. He’d appreciated what he’d had in the way that he sometimes only appreciated women when they were already walking away from him. But survival was merely a lightning strike. It was there, and then it was gone. He’d never once had the feeling of being imbued with purpose.

It was almost like he needed someone actively pressing a blade into his kidneys to feel the impetus to change, and no one — not Felix, not Ingrid, not Edelgard — was prepared to devote their lives to making him appreciate his own.

He had to do it himself... _somehow_.

Felix rose to his feet.

“I’m going downstairs,” Felix said. “Quit moping and come with me." Sylvain opened his mouth to protest, but Felix came back at him quickly: "Or don't, but I’m not going to stick around just to make you feel better about your own self-flagellation.”

Sylvain groaned anyway and sat up again. His head hurt as he curled himself forward. Felix shook his head and walked out, leaving Sylvain to haul himself to his feet and follow. He caught up to Felix fast. He glanced at Felix's hand hanging at his side and felt tempted to take it, just to feel a little comfort, but he stopped himself. Felix wouldn't want that.

He had to change.

“Don’t even think about asking again. I don’t have time.”

Ingrid didn’t even look up when they came in. She was bent over the makeshift table, a hundred pages spread out before her. She moved the pages around in some incomprehensible flurry, stacking this one here, and that one there. Sylvain looked over her shoulder. They were all field reports for something. She waved him away when he leaned in too close.

“I can go into the city on my own,” Felix said.

Ingrid looked up at them both.

“You can go if you want, Felix, but he’s staying here,” she said. She tossed her head in Sylvain’s direction, as if there was some other unloved, shunned disappointment in their midst. Sylvain contemplated grabbing her in a bear hug and refusing to let go until she broke down and _talked_ to him, but that kind of death didn't appeal to him.

“What are you, his mother?"

Ingrid paused, momentarily turning her attention back to the papers. She continued to move them around. Once they were all in roughly the right place, she stacked them together into fewer piles.

“Can you keep him out of trouble?”

“No,” Felix said.

“Then no,” Ingrid said, clipped.

_Betrayer_, Sylvain thought, but it was true enough. He had enough foresight to know that if something tempting crossed his path, he would find a hundred reasons to go for it, and Felix wasn’t about to waste his time getting in the way. Forget drinking — he hadn't gotten _laid_ in weeks. _Weeks!_

"Don't you think this is a little far?" Felix asked. "I've been living and traveling with him for the better part of two months now and there haven't been too many incidents."

"That's true," Sylvain interjected.

"Well, Felix, you weren't in Gautier," Ingrid replied, ignoring Sylvain completely. He felt as though his parents were fighting over his head, but this time he was his brother. He held his tongue not because he wanted to, but because Miklan hadn't deserved it, and he most certainly did. Ingrid continued with an angry sigh: "He has to earn my trust back, and I'm not comfortable with him going out there into a _very_ vulnerable city with a_ lot_ of temptations."

"He'll toe the line because he's scared of you."

"When has that _ever_ stopped him before?"

"I really am trying to stay out of trouble," Sylvain said, quietly.

Felix and Ingrid both looked at Sylvain so sharply that they might as well have just pulled back some bowstrings and shot him. He grimaced.

"Am I not allowed to talk?" he asked.

Ingrid put a hand on her hip but said nothing. Sylvain decided to proceed with caution, but proceed nonetheless.

"I get it," Sylvain said. "Believe me, I do. I know this isn't a fair situation for you. But I really am better. _Not_ perfect –– far from it –– but not anywhere near what I used to be. And yeah, I'm not proud of it, but I have you guys. I'm always at my best when I have you guys."

Ingrid looked away. She seemed as though an entire pallet of bricks sat squarely on her shoulders, and he had laboured to mortar them there.

"Edelgard had a palace to corral you in," Ingrid said, finally. "She had guards, and she had all of the Black Eagles, and she had you as far from Fhirdiad as you possibly could be. Now you're here, and I don't know what you're going to do. People all around us are struggling to get by. I can't ignore them drowning to stop you from ending up face-down in a puddle. I can't do that to myself, either."

Sylvain winced. He could see it clear on her face: she really, truly did not want to get hurt again. He was certain that his most outstanding skill was in disappointing women. He always got just far enough with them that they'd get their hopes up that he'd be good for it that time.

"Again," he said, "I understand. I don't blame you for being wary."

"If you understand, then stop pushing me," she said. Her voice had grown very tight, and he could tell she was trying very hard not to yell at him. He wasn't sure if he appreciated that or if he preferred for her to just get it over with. She carried on, even tighter: "Stop trying to sweet-talk me. Just show me. I _will _see."

Patience had never been a virtue of his, but he nodded reluctantly. Better than her being angry at him.

"Okay," he said. "I'll stay here."

"And mope?" Felix asked, skeptically. "No. If we can't go out, then we can train in the courtyard."

That felt like the last thing Sylvain wanted to do. In fact, what he truly wanted to do was jerk off and then sleep the day away, or even a week, or however long it took for Ingrid to decide he wasn't going to dive headfirst into trouble like a moth to the flame. But he also knew Felix wasn't going to accept that bullshit, and he did feel a little_ thu-thunk_ of his heart at the prospect of Felix sticking around just to spend time with him instead of going ahead alone.

"Sure," he said.

No matter how much he liked to spend time with Felix, getting trounced for his lack of practice didn't seem like it would make his spirits soar. Sylvain knew he was still a talented soldier, as his ability to handle swords, lances _and_ axes had been trained into him since he could walk, but Felix applied what he knew every day, and Sylvain knew that hard work beat talent soundly, and he had languished so much that it felt embarrassing to reveal. 

Back in Enbarr, sparring had felt like play. Now, watching Felix stalk ahead of him, it felt like Felix was going to put him through his paces as a punishment for his laziness.

Felix led him out into the courtyard. It was the courtyard they’d played in as children, and only a single paper birch tree remained, the rest having reached the end of their lives and crumbled, leaving only rotting stumps. Some had fallen over before getting cut down, leaving chunks of roots reaching up from the frozen ground like great worms. Sylvain looked at them with an odd touch of sadness. He’d outlived almost all the trees. The last one standing seemed lonely.

_Fuck, _Sylvain thought. _Do not start comparing yourself to trees._

“Do we even have training swords?” Sylvain asked.

“You don’t want to use real ones?” Felix asked.

He was joking, of course, but it took Sylvain a moment to smile. Felix shrugged it off and headed off to the wall, where a bunch of miscellaneous wood was laid, firewood intermingled with broken-up furniture and scrap. He picked through the pile and selected a couple sturdy rods that looked like they might have been broom handles, or bannister posts. Felix tested them to make sure they held.

“How broken is this?” Sylvain said, watching Felix test their springiness. “Who knew that this place used to be one of the finest castles in all of Fódlan?”

Felix shook his head.

“It was never one of the finest,” he said. “It was always rotten underneath. Now it just looks the part.”

He tossed one of the sticks. Sylvain caught it one-handed and let it slide between his loose fingers until it was comfortably balanced in his palm. It was a little short for a longsword, but he would just have to adjust his reach accordingly. Being a good deal shorter, Felix was sized a little better to his own. Felix squared his shoulders, and he faced off against Sylvain with his usual swagger. Sylvain liked seeing Felix like that — he always looked most comfortable and most confident ready for a fight, and though Sylvain did not relish being reminded of how out of practice he was, he did feel glad that it was Felix about to remind him.

“So if I’m staying for a few more days,” Felix said, “do I at least get to know how bad you were?”

Sylvain took up a proper stance, one foot ahead, the other angled behind.

“I guess,” Sylvain replied.

“You _guess?”_

Felix didn’t wait for an answer. He turned his faux-sword in his hand and then stepped into a swing. Sylvain brought up his stick to block it, and he managed it quite cleanly. Upon striking, Felix eased up, and Sylvain drew back to strike in turn, and then he and Felix traded blows back and forth a dozen times.

Sylvain could already tell Felix was going easy on him. What he wasn't sure of was why Felix bothered asking when he already knew more than he let on. He didn't need the details, did he? Didn’t he want to preserve _some_ positive impressions of his best friend?

"Edelgard didn't tell you?"

"No," Felix said. "She just told me it happened, and that they took care of you in Enbarr. She didn't tell me anything specific."

He paused.

“I’ve wanted to ask for weeks now, but you clam up any time we get close to the subject,” Felix said. “It’s very annoying.”

Sylvain felt a little bad for thinking Edelgard had sold him out, and for not even saying goodbye to her when he left for Fhirdiad. Somehow, he'd imagined her throwing every detail out to spite him, filling Felix's head with stories about that time he'd done this, or that time he'd done that. The dozens of incidents, the stupid arguments, the foolishness of being a grown man with a curfew before sundown. Upon reflection he supposed Edelgard wasn't a petty gossip. She never had been. He was just blaming someone else for his problems, as he always had.

"Well," Sylvain said. “I was pretty bad.”

Felix nodded. They traded a few more blows.

“What do you even want to know?” Sylvain asked.

“What was going through your head,” Felix said. “That’d be a helpful start. I’d rather hear it from you before I hear Ingrid's interpretation.”

“Really?” He was grateful that Felix even considered it. He imagined Ingrid would make it sound a lot more damning, more irredeemable. He didn’t really have an answer, though, not even for himself. “Huh. I don’t know.”

“I’m sure you know. You had it together in Fhirdiad during the war,” Felix said. “At least as much as anyone could, given the circumstances. And you’re not stupid— I just don’t understand. When I left Enbarr, you were shaky on your feet, but you weren’t a drunkard. You weren't getting women pregnant. Why dig yourself into a deeper hole?”

"Having a kid was an accident," Sylvain said. "But I guess… being drunk is kind of like _being_ a kid again."

Felix looked so exasperated that it almost put an inappropriate smile on Sylvain's face. It was cute.

"What does that even mean?" Felix asked.

"I don't know, just... when I was a kid, I didn't have to worry about everything. I could sleep in, and play board games, and go hunting and nap under a tree, and I could do things just for fun. It was like a reprieve from everything waiting for me in adulthood. I didn't have to worry about being productive or changing the world or making sure people lived and died comfortably. I was just a kid, you know? My only concern in the world was when Miklan was going to someday snap and choke me out or something."

"What does that have to do with being a drunkard?"

Felix came at him again, and Sylvain grunted as he parried and swung back; he nearly caught Felix in the face by accident. An apology bubbled up to his lips, but Felix didn’t even flinch, so Sylvain pressed on:

"It's like being exempt from all that stuff," he said. "It's like I can feel something being physically lifted off my shoulders, and time stretches on forever like one perfect, lazy free day back at the Academy.”

He pushed forward, exchanging a few blows. He wasn’t as out of practice as he thought; he even managed to get Felix to concede a few steps.

“It feels like the perfect use of your time: good company, good conversation, lots of laughs, and good sex. I feel human! Honour and dignity never felt even remotely as good as one fucking night of being drunk!” He felt a grin tug at his lips, but he shook it off just as quick. “I don't know, Felix. Does that make sense? Have you _ever_ been drunk?"

"Of course. With you, even," Felix pointed out. He shook his head. "I just don't think it's relaxing."

Sylvain recalled, but he didn't really think of that as _properly _drunk. Being red-faced and merry was not the same as being so drunk that you and a new friend held onto each other and whirled around the room knocking things over, laughing all the while. Being crammed around a table with a bunch of steins of beer was not the same as meeting a total stranger and fucking them with wild abandon, completely free of anything like self-consciousness. Being properly drunk made you invincible. It made jokes funnier, and touch rowdier, and your life more colourful, more exciting.

"That was not drunk," Sylvain said. "You don't get it. You've never had that much fun."

"Maybe I never thought it was fun _because_ of you," Felix replied, curtly, "because I _watched_ _you_. The whole trip to Enbarr, that night at Dorothea's, that night you took me out, even if it started out fun, it wasn't by the end. And I remember what you were like at the academy. Like that night of the White Heron Cup — you bothered the Professor for weeks to let you compete for us, and after all that, you didn't even show up. Edelgard had to do it, because you decided to go get drunk with Hilda instead. Was _that_ fun? Was it worth it?"

Sylvain cringed. He started to reply, but Felix swung at him much too quickly to block. Sylvain hopped back instead, letting Felix's weapon pass just across his belly.

"That was stupid of me," Sylvain relented. "But I just remember it being fun—"

Felix swung again, right at his legs. Sylvain did not dodge that one so gracefully, and while he avoided getting struck, he overcorrected his balance and ended up with a hand on the ground anyway. He cursed under his breath, wiping the muddy slush off on the skirt of his coat, and he looked up at Felix. Felix watched him, unsmiling, and he sighed, a great fog of his breath visible on the air.

“Your footwork is shit,” Felix said. “Ugh.”

Sylvain rolled his eyes.

“Well, it _was_ fun.”

"It was fun for _you_," Felix said, and he pointed the end of his stick at Sylvain's face. Sylvain straightened up, and Felix followed his jaw with the tip. He continued: "But if you don't even remember what actually happened, it seems a little desperate to comfort yourself by insisting it _must_ have been good."

He had a point. Sylvain sighed. The stick felt like a brick in his hands, and he just wanted to drop it.

"Is that all you did while I was gone?" Felix demanded. "Drink yourself stupid? Let Gautier waste away while you drank away your memories and rationalized that you were having _fun?_"

"Sort of," Sylvain said. He couldn't admit that he didn't remember, either. It was a fog, thick and unsurpassable. He didn't remember much of his time in Gautier after the war, but for years he'd laboured under the assumption that it was because he didn't _want_ to. Had he literally drunk them away?

He laughed. It bubbled out of him like it might ease the tension. Felix sighed.

"This isn't funny," Felix said. "Are you just going to keep doing that for the rest of your life? What's all this bullshit about being a better man if you can't even acknowledge that?"

Sylvain hesitated to reply. Felix saw it, and to fill the gap he stepped forward with a stroke of his stick. Sylvain was too busy reeling from the verbal blow to properly catch the physical one, but he got his own up just in time, and the wood clanged out loudly, even clumsily. Felix held it, waiting to be parried back, but instead Sylvain grabbed Felix's stick. Felix resisted at first, but Sylvain won out, pulling it from his grip and tossing it aside.

"I can't think with you hitting me," Sylvain told him.

Felix looked like he might go retrieve it, but Sylvain reached and caught his arm. Felix lingered in that hold, and up close, Sylvain thought he looked tired. Sylvain certainly felt tired.

"I'm going to stop," Sylvain promised, and his voice came out a little vehement. "I want to stop. I just… for a bit I thought I _did _stop. But it never seemed to be enough, because no matter how hard I tried, people kept treating me like I was still that person. And now _you_ know, and I'm just…"

He trailed and scoffed, hard.

"I don't want you to see me that way."

"I don't want to see you that way, either, but you were just describing being drunk as being some sort of divine experience, and you don't even remember what you did to Gautier," Felix said, finally. "That's pathetic, Sylvain."

He was pathetic.

Felix pulled away, but Sylvain shifted to hold him by the shoulders in both hands. He felt like he could just keep him there and plead until Felix understood, or at the very least believed him when he said he wanted to be better.

"Hey, hey, hey," Sylvain said, pacifying. "It's not… divine, or anything like that. I don't think that."

"Why do you want to stop, then?"

"This will sound stupid," Sylvain said. "Don't make fun of me. I'm serious."

"Okay," Felix said, but he didn't sound very convinced.

"Whenever I was between jobs, traveling, I'd meet vagrants — old guys who lived kind of like me, but they'd never been born to nobility, or had the opportunities I had. And they'd be in their thirties or forties, but they looked way older. Time had been _stolen_ from them."

"Okay."

"And when I saw myself in the mirror at the tailor's when Hubert first brought me to Enbarr, I thought I looked pretty good," he said. "But afterwards I thought about it a lot, about how what I actually look like is so much older and worn-out than how I imagined myself. And then I worried that someday I'd see myself in the mirror and not even recognize myself. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to look like that."

"Wow," Felix said. He paused in a way that made Sylvain think he was about to get made fun of, but Felix just shook his head. "_Don't_ tell Ingrid you're more concerned about your looks than whatever you've put her through."

That was worse than being the butt of a joke.

"It's not about my looks," he insisted, even though it was at least a little bit about that. He swallowed hard and fixed Felix with his most pleading look, suddenly feeling a little desperate. He wanted to be understood, just a little bit, especially by this man he cared for so much. "It's about losing my life. It's about waking up and realizing I'm forty and having accomplished nothing, and everyone around me knowing it just by looking at me."

Felix looked away for a moment, and then he said: "I see."

"And you're right, I don't even remember what I did," Sylvain carried on, grimly. "And everyone else, Felix, they're getting married, they're having kids, they're rebuilding cities, they're changing the _world. _Even you, you're protecting the roads, you're _doing_ something for people you don't even know. And you're going to leave, and Ingrid won't talk to me… all I have left is me."

He hung his head. He felt angry, mostly at himself, but he was so resigned to it that he couldn't even muster up the urge to let it out. He just struggled on his words for a moment, and Felix watched him. Felix looked annoyed, but there was a softness to his eyes that chipped away at Sylvain's heart.

"I just stopped trying to make anything of myself," Sylvain said. "It's like… I used to skip classes, and now I skip out on my life."

Felix stood there under Sylvain’s hands, and then he sighed and reached up to hold onto his wrists. Sylvain decided to take that small gesture and run a mile with it, instead pulling Felix into his arms and pulling him close. Felix made a muffled noise of protest against his shoulder, but relaxed after a moment, too. His hands snaked up Sylvain’s back, and he sighed.

“I hope Fhirdiad is everything you want it to be, then,” Felix said. “I hope it can be for you what Remire was for me.”

Sylvain nodded, and then leant his cheek against the side of Felix’s head. His hair was cold from the crisp air, but his scalp was warm. He felt the impetus to lay his lips there, to pull Felix into a desperate kiss, to insist upon how much he needed him close, but he knew Felix would balk. He was afraid — he was _so_ afraid.

“I’m sorry that it’s been almost thirty years and you’re still dealing with my shit,” he said instead. Coward.

“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?” Felix asked. He paused. "I know it's not usually what you want to hear."

"No, no," Sylvain said. "You say what I_ need_ to hear."

Felix patted his back awkwardly. He didn’t say anything more. Sylvain felt there was something more to be said, but he bit it back. He didn’t want to say it.

Only he could change himself.


	23. Selfish

****

Not being able to sleep was new.

Sylvain couldn’t say what time it was, as it felt like it had been forever since sundown but not even the slightest trace of dawn had begun to overtake the night. He laid in bed, miserably alone despite Felix being a hair’s breadth away. Sylvain wished he was asleep, but instead he was plagued with a stubborn erection.

On second thought, Sylvain wasn’t so sure it was stubborn. Maybe that was how it always was. With any of his usual bedmates, he could have rolled over and pawed at them until they woke up enough to open their legs for him, or let him know to take care of things himself. Not so with Felix. How could his dick be expected to understand that when it had been weeks since he’d gotten off with anyone?

_ Weeks._

These nightly visits felt more and more persistent every time, demanding he go out prowling, but here he was, with Felix. It wasn’t like Felix was a bad bedmate otherwise. Quite the opposite, actually. He kept politely to his side, and he didn’t complain much when Sylvain snored or invaded his side of the bed in his sleep. Maybe if Felix had been more of a bear about it, Sylvain would have less respect for the neutrality of their bed. He might have even actively pushed Felix’s buttons by inviting people back. But as it was, Felix wasn’t about to help out. He might understand, at least — when they were growing, maybe there’d been awkward moments here or there where someone sprung a spontaneous hard-on, but now Sylvain wasn't about to ask Felix to _do_ anything about it. Felix didn't like him like _that._

Sylvain sighed, much louder than he intended in the stillness of the night, and he turned his head to at least look at Felix. Felix was sprawled on his back, fast asleep, lips parted. His chest rose and fell peacefully. Sylvain thought to wake him anyway, just to talk, but he didn’t. It wouldn’t be nice.

_Okay, _Sylvain reasoned. He’d just wait it out. The raging erection currently tenting his braies would give up and fade if he ignored it.

But he didn’t _want_ to ignore it. It was seldom in his nature to ignore it. Without another thought, he snaked a hand under the covers and wrapped his hand around his cock and held it. It pulsed under his fingers, and for an instant he held his breath, eyes fluttering closed. He rolled onto his back and pumped himself once, slowly, but just that was enough to make their terrible bed frame creak.

Sylvain winced, waiting for Felix to stir, but he remained fast asleep. He pumped himself again without thinking and then he let go of himself, aching. He curled his hands into the mattress. He felt the sudden embarrassing burn of tears in his eyes.

_Fuck,_ he thought. _Fuck!_

—————-

At breakfast the next morning, Sylvain passed off his exhaustion as simple travel fatigue. He had been on the road for a long time, he reasoned, ignoring the weeks languishing in Enbarr between. Felix, knowing some degree of truth, did not seem convinced. Ingrid didn't even entertain the thought.

She just asked a damning question:

"What are you doing today?"

"Uh," Sylvain started, and he glanced at Felix.

"We're not sparring today," Felix said, and he tossed Sylvain a nonplussed look. _What are you looking at me for? S_ylvain sat there a moment, racking his brains for what he could do within the castle walls, but his only ideas were to check in on Horse and to sit down with a good book. He didn't need to rack for long. The first couple seconds were enough for Ingrid, who shook her head.

"Felix?" she asked, and so Sylvain gave up.

"I'm going to go visit with Annette," Felix said.

"I'd like to see Annette," Sylvain said, and Ingrid didn't even need to _do_ anything for Sylvain to feel chastened. Of course he couldn't go see Annette. Annette was out there, beyond the castle walls. "Or… not. I'll sit here with my thumb up my ass, I guess, waiting for that damn wall to come down."

Ingrid stood up, gathering her bowl and spoon. She glanced at Felix. Sylvain felt regret.

"I've got a lot to do this morning, but maybe we can meet for tea later today, if you're back from Annette's before dinner?"

"Sure," Felix said.

And then Ingrid left.

"I swear she's doing this deliberately," Sylvain said, a twinge of frustration bleeding into his voice. "She gives you attention just to rub it in with me."

Felix didn't say anything to that. He looked away for a moment, lips tightly pursed, and Sylvain felt like an asshole. It wasn't that Ingrid didn't care about Felix, of course, and Sylvain itched to express that, but Felix made no complaint and so Sylvain didn't want to look like he was desperately covering for himself. He was an asshole either way.

"You really don't want to spar today?" Sylvain asked.

"Maybe after dinner," Felix said. He paused, and he looked at Sylvain, though his eyes never went north of Sylvain's jaw. He added: "You should shave. And bathe, too. You really do look haggard."

"Alright," Sylvain said. "If it'll make you happy, I'll get all gussied up for our sparring date. Clean shirt and everything."

A tight smile tugged at one corner of Felix's mouth, and he gave the slightest amused huff as he stood up, gathering his own bowl and spoon.

"Good. And I'll ask Annette if she wants to come back with me," he suggested. "You'd be happy to see her, right?"

Sylvain nodded. He did want to see Annette. He wondered how much more elegant she'd gotten in another five years, and if she still scrunched up her face when she got mad, and if she still sang those nonsense songs without thinking.

"See you tonight, then," Sylvain said.

Felix left too, leaving Sylvain sitting at the long table, surrounded by knights and other castle staff, who continued chatting amongst themselves merrily. He looked down the table's length and found himself quite alone.

Sylvain sighed, wolfed down the last few bites of his porridge, and then gathered up his own bowl. He still felt sleepless and completely wrecked for it. He put together a plan for the day that felt as rickety as an old peasant's cart.

A nap, bathing, a shave, and then… who knew what?

Bathing was not particularly enjoyable in the dead of winter anywhere, but it was much less so in Fhirdiad castle. If he felt like playing with fire he might have slipped out of the castle to see if any of the public bathhouses were still operating, but as it was, he was stuck with a bucket of boiled water. He procured both the bucket and the water from the kitchen, where the head cook directed him to the old bathing room.

"Really?" he said. "I can't take it up to my room?"

"No," she said. "You'll slop water everywhere."

In decades past in Fhirdiad castle, Sylvain had been used to having servants cart a tub up the stairs to whatever quarters he or his family was staying in, and watching the procession line of basins of hot water hauled up the stairs. He'd never used the bathing room, as it had been used primarily by lower-ranked visiting nobles. He discovered it was a rather empty large room with a wooden dividing wall for men and women, and a stone basin built into the wall. He shrugged it off. It was cool and not particularly inviting, but it was much better than wiping himself down in the stables, as he'd done for years, too.

Sylvain imagined that after the knights rotated shifts, it would be quite busy, but mid-afternoon, it was just him and the voices of a couple chatty women floating over the divider. He listened to their conversation for a few minutes, but they were just talking about some man one of them had been seeing, and Sylvain's attention drifted. He stripped naked and set about cleaning himself, rationing his rapidly-cooling water for his underarms, his groin, his ass, his hair — the rest he just rinsed off, shivering as the water dripped off him and left him in air that felt chilly by comparison. He thought of the hot bath that Jasmine had drawn for him in Enbarr, and how nice it would have been to sink into that water again, a pretty girl watching him and letting her eyes drop to things below the waterline.

On the other side of the divider, the women giggled. They complained to each other about some bad lover notorious for calling on them at all hours of the night. Sylvain itched to tease them: _you don't know how bad he has it! He's plagued of thinking about beautiful girls like you all the time, who can blame him for wanting to do something about it?_

He didn't even know if they were beautiful, but he imagined them to be, a busty pair of ladies who knew their way around a lance. If he popped his head around the divider to introduce himself, maybe they'd be friendly, and—

There went his dick again, half-hard at the slightest fantasy. Sylvain sighed. He knew he had bad habits, but jerking off to women bathing barely feet from him felt sick even to him. Besides, he reasoned. His water was going cold and he didn't relish shaving cold.

He sighed, fetching his knife from his discarded belt and setting about the task of making his jawline smooth-skinned. The women kept talking, their conversation meandering from the bad lover's late-night visits to his selfishness in bed, and the way he flipped her around as if she were his own personal doll. Sylvain dragged the blade down his cheek and stubby little dark hairs rained down all over his chest. He thought they were being unfair, talking to each other instead of just telling him to get his shit together. How was he supposed to know if they didn't care to tell him? But on the other hand, Sylvain knew he didn't care about some stranger's side of it. He was just making excuses for himself again.

He finished up, running his hand over his jaw to be sure he'd gotten it all, and then rinsing himself off with the last of the water. Lacking a towel, he redressed still wet. His shirt clung to his skin, and his wet hair dampened his collar, leaving it clammy against the back of his neck. Whatever. As long as he was clean and warm.

By time he left the bathroom, leaving the plausibly-beautiful giggly women behind him, his erection had faded again, but he knew it would be back. Sylvain figured that at this point, making eye-contact with an even passably attractive person for more than a second would get his blood pumping. He needed to get off, and badly, even if it was just on his own. To his good fortune, Felix was out. He could just sprawl out in their bed for a bit, undisturbed. Better than in the shitter later, or frantically in a stairwell, or some other less-than-ideal place that made him feel like a creep.

It was not to be. As he headed back, he heard a voice float up ahead of him, and as he rounded the corner, he spotted Captain de Gouges and some soldiers. They were stopped at the end of the hall to talk about something, and Sylvain abruptly turned back around, ducking back around the corner. He didn't feel like risking her striking up a conversation with him now, but she and her soldiers were blocking the only route to his room.

Damn.

Sylvain dared to peek out. They were still talking, but now a soldier glanced in his direction. Sylvain didn't feel threatened by it, but he did retreat. He looked up the hall to the nearest door — the doors to the chapel. He didn't really want to go in there, but was even more resistant to the idea of being swept up into a conversation with someone who obviously despised him. He crossed the hall, reached the door, and slipped in. He did not let the door just close behind him; he controlled its heavy swing back into its frame, the handle still turned, and then he gently released it, like any well-practiced sneak.

Safe, he breathed a sigh of relief. He'd wait ten minutes or so and then check to see if they were gone.

It was quiet inside; Sylvain knew he was alone, but his imagination immediately supplied him with the ghosts of old friends. Mercedes sitting in the pews, Marianne praying by the altar, Dimitri standing there and staring up at the ceiling as though an answer would descend from the sky at any moment. Sylvain shook them off as if they were a chill, or a raindrop down the back of his collar. Reminiscing exhausted him.

But Sylvain had grown up around this chapel, and that filled his mind, too. Faerghus had always been more religious than Adrestia. While all of Fódlan was conceived by some deity or her church, Faerghus itself was gifted. Through riotous, indignant struggle, the people of Faerghus claimed their independence, feeling that the goddess had given them the right to stand on their own. While Adrestia had still had churches dotting the landscape and small congregations of devoted believers, Faerghus had taken another approach. The people there were not content to rediscover the goddess or take up a new church in her name; the people of Faerghus went about their business, quietly believing in a goddess that had no love for them. Few seemed to have stopped believing in her entirely, but there was a general feeling that if she did exist, she was capricious and cruel.

Sylvain did not feel too differently. Walking through the empty chapel, he thought that there were no gods at all. If the goddess existed, she, too, was nothing more than a dragon — powerful, no doubt, but no less false than the Immaculate One and her ilk.

He looked at the altar. Realizing there was no one to stop him, he walked up to it, past the point where you were supposed to go without some sort of rank or holiness. He strode across the dais and looked up at the windows, and then at all the dust-covered sideboards that used to hold all sorts of finery. There was something oddly aggravating about not knowing where it had went; he liked to think that it had been melted down into coin and given back to the people in some way or form, but he thought the most realistic option was that when Fhirdiad had burned, the remaining clergy had fled with it. They had probably bankrolled their escapes the same way he had fled from Gautier. He wondered if any of them would ever come back like he had. Would they be largely penniless, too? Would they have to repay the people they'd stolen from, and if so, how?

Then he heard voices carrying from just beyond the door, one of them evidently belonging to the Captain. He looked around for the nearest hiding place and saw there were more doors at the back. Sylvain tried the first one and found it locked, but the second was open. It was just a small office, stripped bare as the rest of the castle. The walls used to have bookcases built into them; Sylvain could see the discolouration where timber had rested for decades, and the great nails that hadn’t come out of the stone. It smelled as stale as anything. Sylvain closed the door behind him and locked it. Dull light filtered through the dusty windows, and Sylvain leant on the windowsill. It creaked under his weight. He peered through the glass, stopped to scrub at it with the cuff of his coat, and then watched whole lines of knights go through some sort of inspection. Ingrid marched back and forth in front of them, giving some sort of speech. They all paid rapt attention. Not a single one of them knew he was there, and he was doubtful they could see him.

Sylvain listened for sounds of movement in the chapel, but he heard nothing. At least ten minutes passed and still he heard nothing, and then he thought: fuck it, he needed to jerk off. He felt quite safe with the door locked, especially being that he was in an empty room no one would need to go into, so he elected to just stay where he was. He thought maybe he had found his private place, so he settled in — the windowsill was a little narrow to take his weight entirely, so he braced his feet against the floor and undid the clasps on his jacket, and then his belt and the buttons on his fly. He took his cock out and wrapped his fingers in a tight ring around the base of his cock and thought: _who am I thinking about today?_

The first person who came to mind was Felix.

Sylvain almost laughed at himself.

_No, no, no, no, _he told himself. What about... Ingrid? No, absolutely not, not acceptable. Then what about the blonde girl working the serving line in the kitchens? She wore the top button of her shirt undone, a bold choice in a castle this cold, and Sylvain could imagine what her tits looked like underneath. But who was he kidding? He hadn’t seen a naked breast in weeks. Almost a month, and not for a lack of trying. The only person he had seen shirtless was...

Felix.

Sylvain pumped himself slowly.

He’d glimpsed Felix changing just this morning, actually. They usually changed facing opposite walls, but that morning, Sylvain had turned and found himself looking at Felix pulling his trousers on, and Felix had looked away as he tucked himself into his pants. A tail of dark hair ran up to his navel, and he had the slightest visible arc to his ribs, and his pecs were high and firm— Sylvain rolled his lower lip between his teeth. Felix changed as meticulously as he trained, methodically buttoning his shirt from the bottom up instead of just starting in the middle and going one way and then the other. Sylvain had watched that strip of skin vanish, and now he felt the urge to step into that memory and rip his shirt open again, so hard the buttons would bounce off the stone floors.

He paused a moment, guilty. He’d never really felt guilty masturbating to his women friends, but he thought Felix would kick his ass if he knew. Maybe Felix would even _sense_ what he was doing now and show up to do something about it. But maybe Felix would like it, maybe Felix would want to blow him again—

Oh, fuck it.

Sylvain shuddered a little as he tightened his grip, stroking his skin up and down around his hard cock. He imagined touching Felix — running his broad palms up Felix’s hard, leanbody, grabbing him and pushing him down on the bed. They’d grapple, and Felix wouldn’t give it up easy. He’d make Sylvain work for it, but that would make it that much sweeter when Felix would win over him, pinning him underneath his thighs and grinding back against his—

Sylvain gasped, a little louder than he expected, and he found his free hand clutching the windowsill so hard he was bound to get splinters. He hunched over himself, stroking furiously. Oh shit— _oh_—

Someone tried the door, the handle rattling loudly as it struck the bolt. Sylvain shot to his feet like he’d been slapped, and he scrambled to put himself away. With fumbling fingers he buttoned his fly with his hard cock pressed up against his abdomen.

“Who’s in there?” a man called.

“Just a minute,” Sylvain called back. The man said something that Sylvain couldn’t quite hear, but he heard his name being spoken. He left his shirt untucked to hide his dangling belt, and then he fastened his coat overtop. It was not particularly comfortable but it hid decently.

“Open this door immediately,” someone else said.

Sylvain went to the door and unlocked it. Before he could turn the handle, the person on the other side opened it. He stepped back and found himself face to face with Captain de Gouges. Her brow was furrowed in disapproval.

“Just what do you think you’re doing in here?” she asked him.

“I just wanted a quiet place to sit and think,” he replied, casually as he could, but he could feel guilt radiating off his collar. He didn’t think she’d believe it. “I technically lived here for a good chunk of my life, you know. I should be able to go wherever I want in my home.”

The Captain looked him up and down with a little curl to her lip.

“You think you own this place, do you?”

Not exactly what he’d intended to say, but he supposed he couldn’t fault her for picking up what he’d laid out.

“No, Captain,” he said, “I just mean I didn’t think I was disturbing anyone by holing up in here.”

“Out,” she said.

He muttered a _yes sir_ under his breath and pushed by her. She lingered behind him and gave the room a cursory look, as if he might have stolen something or bothered to vandalize an empty room. Sylvain contemplated just continuing to walk and leaving, but her knights boxed him in as though he were being detained. He weighed his options. He hadn’t really done anything wrong, but it was nice to know his feeling of being unwelcome was not just in his head.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is the chapel off-limits, or something?”

“Ingrid asked me to keep an eye out for you,” the Captain replied. She certainly had her eyes on him. “She said you’d be prone to wandering off. Shouldn’t you be making better use of your time, boy?”

_Boy._ He hated the joviality in which she so quickly reduced him, a grown man, to being nothing but a child. He had the thought to pick a fight, but something stopped him. That nagging feeling that he was supposed to know who she was had returned, and with it, the reminder that he was supposed to be a respectable man. He swallowed his frustration. He didn’t think he could muster up the casualness to try to talk to her about her plays, or her having been imprisoned by Dimitri, but at the very least he could try to extend a hand to her.

“I get the impression you don’t like me very much,” he said. “I know Ingrid’s probably told you some pretty unflattering things, but I think if you got to know me...”

He trailed. It was both leading and a delusion. Sylvain did not think he could really convince her of anything, not when he was the short-lived and last Margrave Gautier and certainly everyone knew it. It wasn’t every day that one of the greatest houses in Faerghus history fell, after all, especially not for such stupid reasons. He wasn't sure there was much about himself that he could say with pride.

Not yet, anyway.

“I know plenty about you,” Captain de Gouges said. “Enough to know you’re not skulking around the chapel for a lark.”

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

“I really didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “I’ll just go.”

He turned to go. No one stopped him, and he walked as casually as he could with the mild tickle of the head of his cock in a vice grip between his waistband and his abdomen. But De Gouges did call after him: “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

He paused, but then he kept walking.

He didn’t know her.

He was afraid of knowing who she was. Or worse, he was afraid of remembering what he’d done.

Running from the Captain didn’t give him anywhere to go, unfortunately. His privacy was thoroughly ruined, but even if he went back to his room, the image of Felix undressed was gone. He thought, instead, that he was a colossal disaster, and of how close he'd been to being caught masturbating in the chapel office. He wanted to kick himself. Better men did productive things with their time. They were not slaves to their own vices, desperate to soothe themselves with whatever got their blood racing fast enough. They had friends who wanted to be with them.

He decided to go find Ingrid. Maybe she was finished dealing with the soldiers, and maybe he could catch her in a decent mood and offer to do some work for her. No matter how mad she was, she probably wouldn't turn down a serious offer to help, even if it was just sweeping floors or something. And Sylvain was certain that if he kept trying, she would come around on their friendship, too.

But by time he fixed his trouser situation and headed down to the courtyard he’d seen her in, she was gone, and so were most of the knights. One told him that she had gone inside to warm up with some tea, so Sylvain went back inside and pondered where that might be. He didn’t find her in the mess hall, nor in her office, nor in her room. Finally, a knight took pity on him and directed him downstairs to one of the sitting rooms, so Sylvain plucked up his best puppy-dog eyes and headed down.

He was only halfway down the stairs when he heard her voice. She was talking to someone. He realized, not one step later, that he could hear Ingrid and _Felix_ talking. He very nearly walked in to say hello when he heard his own name spoken, and that stopped him dead in his tracks, his weight between two steps. He shifted to the lower one slowly, listening.

“I don’t get the impression _anything_ has changed,” Ingrid said. "He's just gotten better at hiding it."

Sylvain eased himself down to sit, glad for once that the castle was all stone instead of creaky wooden stairs. His heart slunk into his throat and he leant towards the open doorway.

“It's not that I don't believe you,” Felix said. “You'd know better than anyone. It's just not what he's told me.”

“What has he told you?”

Sylvain shifted his weight forward just enough to peer in. He couldn’t see much of either of them; they were both sitting on the couch with their backs to the door, silhouetted by the roaring fire. Ingrid’s cloak was draped over the back of a chair, still damp with snow. Felix was cozied up in his own. Ingrid watched him as he contemplated the answer. She didn't look like she would entertain disagreement, but at the very least, Felix never cared about pleasing people.

“Only what he's been cornered into saying,” Felix said, finally. He glanced aside and Sylvain sat back into his hiding place. “And what he has said, I have my doubts about. He's not a liar… but he leaves things out.”

A pause.

"He always leaves things out," Ingrid said, frustrated. "He never asks for help, he just drops hints, he just mopes around until someone takes notice — all you can do is guess, but if you're wrong, he's hurt but doesn't show _that_, and then…"

Then what? Ingrid sighed. Sylvain didn't think that was right. He couldn't ask for help. No one wanted to help him. No one _could_ help him, not with problems like these. He couldn't ask them to console him; he didn't deserve it. He hadn't earned it. _Everyone_ hurt, he wasn't special for it, and-– 

"It's true," Felix said, finally.

Sylvain's heart jumped into his throat and throbbed. 

“He’s been driving me crazy,” Ingrid barrelled on. “Talking about how he wants to make a difference, but even though this place is falling apart, he just sits there waiting for the wall to come down, and for someone to give him some high-ranking job. He talks like it's all okay but it's obviously not.”

"I know. I’ve noticed."

There was another long pause. Sylvain found himself tensing up the longer it dragged on, his fingers pressed into his palms. He dared peek out again, just briefly. Neither had moved, each still sitting on either end of the couch. He ducked back when Ingrid turned her head to look at Felix. 

"Can we maybe not talk about Sylvain?" Ingrid asked. "No offence, I'm sure you have plenty to vent about, and I do too, but…"

“No, I understand,” Felix replied. “I wouldn't mind having just one conversation with someone that isn't about his personal opera."

Sylvain flinched.

"Fair," Ingrid said. "How are things in Remire? Are you rebuilding it?"

“There's no point, really, because it’s just me there,” Felix said. “I've built a home for myself, though. I know a lot of people are safe on the roads with me there. I like being self-sufficient; I know just how strong I am.”

“But you're all alone?”

Felix paused. Sylvain could imagine his hesitation, the way he’d look aside and work up the courage to admit it.

“Yes,” he said, finally.

“Felix,” Ingrid said, concerned.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “It’s a small trade-off for what I enjoy about it.”

Ingrid made a small inquiring noise, but Felix didn't elaborate. Instead, he said:

"I don't think I've ever seen you happier. All things considered, of course, living in a rat-hole like this."

"I am happy," Ingrid said, and though she sighed at the subject change, Sylvain could hear the smile on her voice. "I'm doing good work, and I'm making a difference in people's lives the way I always dreamed of. The twins are thrilled to be leading Galatea, and Fhirdiad gets a little more liveable every year. I get to see Annette when we both have time. I'm seeing someone."

"Good."

"It is good," Ingrid replied. She sounded amused. Felix wasn't about to dish out much in the way of praise for the life she made for herself, after all. Sylvain itched with questions, and he did feel tempted to burst out from the door and bellow _WHY WON'T YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THIS?_ at the top of his lungs, but he refrained.

It hurt, a little, to think of all the time the two of them had spent with the Black Eagles without him. He’d encouraged them to join and he hadn’t even been there for the glory days.

"Good," Felix repeated. "Frankly, Fhirdiad needs someone with your principles. Your ideas about chivalry, your morals. It’s not what it deserves, but if you keep this up, maybe it’ll earn you someday."

"You don't think it's naive?" Ingrid asked, amused.

"No," Felix said, and then he sighed. "Well, _yes_. But there's no sense in criticizing you when you're actually doing what you always wanted."

"Edelgard spoke very highly of what you were doing," Ingrid replied.

"I don't really care for her praise," Felix said. "It makes me think her head's gotten fat on peacetime and marriage and her standards have dropped. What I'm doing doesn't actually measure up.”

“You could always help out here for a while,” Ingrid said. “We could use someone with your skills, and your frankness.”

“That isn’t very much to offer,” Felix said. “I don’t have much of an interest in politics, the people aren’t at war, and I’m not exactly a good mediator. I’d just make things worse.”

Ingrid sighed.

“And being here,” Felix continued, “it just makes me think about everything that happened. I'm not going to dance around that, Ingrid."

Sylvain peeked out. Ingrid was sitting sideways on the couch now to better look at Felix, and Felix turned to her. His brows were knitted in concern.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, and he sounded a little reluctant to say it — Felix always dished out apologies like someone was twisting his arm, even if the only person doing the twisting was his own guilt. And even then, Sylvain was shocked to hear Felix say it aloud. Why didn't he get apologies? Felix continued: “I should have stayed to help rebuild Faerghus. I should have helped, even if only for you.”

“Maybe so,” Ingrid said, "but you didn't. I've accepted that.”

"You shouldn't have to accept it," Felix said. "I should have stayed."

"Well, what else am I supposed to do?" Ingrid replied. "Wallow? I don’t think you get it. I’m not _mad_ that you left. I'm just sad that you think you can't stay unless you’re useful to us. It's sad to me that I lost all three of you, even though only Dimitri died.”

Felix hummed some sort of acknowledgement. Sylvain felt a tidal wave of guilt overcome him, only to be driven into the rocky shores when Ingrid added:

“And when I think about that, it makes me feel selfish for spending so much time and energy shaping my own life and my kingdom into what I want it to be while my friends flounder. If you think you should have been here, then why didn't you come back?”

_Selfish...?_

“You’re not selfish,” Felix said. "You're not responsible for what we do."

“How can I not feel selfish," Ingrid replied, tersely, her voice on the cusp of an argument, "when I've only been able to do everything I've done in the past few years _because_ I cut him off and sent him to Enbarr?"

Sylvain stood up. He wasn’t sure how much more he could eavesdrop on. He was sure the emotions radiating off of him were palpable on the air, a miasma that would, at any moment, turn their attentions to him.

There was a long pause. Sylvain felt a deep panic, and contemplated walking in on them and pretending it was by chance, but he did not think he was so fabulous of an actor that they would believe he was genuinely oblivious. He shifted his weight between the stairs, tempted to run right back up them, or else pass by the door and hope they didn’t notice.

“He's selfish,” Felix said, his voice dipping low. "But it wasn't your responsibility to make him less so."

Sylvain took the stairs. There was no way he could listen to another moment of it.

So their reunion hadn't been a fun one. Deep down, Sylvain had always known that would be the case. They were no longer children coming to Fhirdiad for the summer so their fathers could attend court. They weren't even graduates coming back from the school year and looking to the future with equal measures of apprehensive and naive hope.

They were adults. Felix was an emotionally constipated lone wolf desperate to leave but itching to stay, Ingrid was a guilt-ridden knight desperately trying to rebuild the capitol of a dissolved kingdom, and Sylvain was a directionless borderline-drunkard and perpetual womanizer who had _clearly _left his sanity at the gates of Fhirdiad. And Dimitri… well, Dimitri was dead.

Dimitri was _dead._

What a fucking privilege that seemed to be.

It felt absurd to take the blame for it all onto his shoulders, but he was so sick of that burden, and so sick of feeling responsible for the past. It crippled his ability to look forward. Why had he spent so much time trying to save Dimitri just to go back to Edelgard at the end of the war? He could have just stayed with Faerghus and been a loyal soldier and a loyal son and died fighting in the mud on the Tailtean Plains. Felix and Ingrid could have even been the ones to do it — then they'd be having a whole other conversation right now, wouldn't they?

Sylvain exhaled hard as he stalked through the castle. Was he tethering Felix and Ingrid to something they wanted to move on from? Was that it? Neither of them had patience for his struggles because neither of them had their own closure, and he was sure of that. He was sick of them acting like they did. And if that was the case, he might as well prove it to them.

In a pique of self-loathing, Sylvain decided to just take down the wall to Dimitri’s quarters himself.

He didn't care how much effort it took. He was going to break down that wall, get the dagger and whatever the hell else was still in there, and throw it at Felix and Ingrid and see what they had to say about it.

When he arrived at Dimitri's door, a buzzing in his nerves from the anticipation of the walk, he took one look at the brick wall and he walked to it and shoved it. He succeeded only in walking into it, but it felt good to push it as if it might just toppled under his indignant determination. The wall was a good deal taller than himself, covering not just the doorway but a good deal of the structure around it. Sylvain sized it up as if he knew anything about masonry. Someone had already started chipping away at it with a chisel and a hammer, but had left the task woefully incomplete, the tools scattered on the floor. Sylvain knew the bricks were adhered together with lime mortar, but he did not know how to remove it beyond chipping away as the other person had. He imagined the hall was not big enough to accommodate a large enough battering ram with the men required to hoist and drive it.

Sylvain shucked off his coat and threw it aside. He picked up the chisel and held it to the edge of a brick, and he lined up the hammer and swung. A chip of lime mortar shot off with a _clink_ and hit the ground.Sylvain smiled to himself. It wasn’t that hard. He could do it all himself.

He took off another chip and another. With the tenacity of a dog trying to get the last bit of marrow out of a bone, he kept at it. He amassed such a pile of chips that he managed to get the entire perimeter of a brick exposed, and then he set about trying to wedge it out. No matter how he struggled, it did not budge, so he resumed chipping away at more of the mortar. If he could get one, he reasoned, the rest would come easier.

By time he cleared out more of the perimeter, his shoulders were growing sore, and the energy gifted to him by his anger had petered out. He’d also struck the side of his own hand more than once upon glancing off the side of the chisel instead of striking its head. He knew his hand would purple and bruise within hours, but he persisted. He stopped only to strip off his shirt, tossing it in a pile with his coat and the rubble he was producing, feeling sweaty and frustrated despite the chilly air.

“This had better be worth it,” Sylvain told himself aloud. “Edelgard can never make it easy for me, no, she has to... agh!”

He struck the side of his hand again. He swore and dropped the chisel and hammer entirely, nearly catching his toe in the process. He looked down and found his chest was spattered with a fine dust that clung to his skin and hair, and he cursed again and brushed at it with the edge of his hand, as if that would fix anything.

“Selfish!” he announced to himself. He _was_ selfish by his very existence, but he didn’t _want_ to be. He stooped to retrieve the hammer and chisel again, and he resumed trying to remove the brick.

Sylvain wasn’t sure how long he had been at it, but eventually he managed to get deep in enough around that brick that he could wedge the chisel in and position it without having to hold it. He adjusted his grip on the hammer to swing with both hands. It was not unlike an axe, albeit with a much, much finer target. Sylvain swung, missed the first and glanced off the brick itself, swung again, and _felt_ the brick dislodge.

Relief flooded him. He let out a whoop and dropped the hammer to pry the loose brick out. He held it between his hands like it was his own newborn child, and he peered into the hole he had made. There was still mortar underneath. He frowned and reached in to brush aside any dust, but it was solid. He couldn’t see even one spec of the wooden door underneath.

He realized, with some horror, that there were multiple layers of bricks.

Sylvain raised the brick high in one hand and turned to spike it down the stairs behind him. He was glad for his tight grip when he realized Felix was standing halfway up the stairs, in a prime position to have been brained by a flying brick. Sylvain froze. Felix held up a hand to defend himself, teeth grit.

“What the fuck?” Felix asked.

Sylvain watched Felix’s gaze drop from his face to his knees and then back up again. Sylvain, standing shirtless in a small pile of rubble and holding a brick over his head like a triumph, felt himself go red.

“How long have you been standing here?” Sylvain demanded.

“I don’t know, five minutes?” Felix guessed. “Were you going to throw that? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m taking down the wall! This is what I came here to do,” Sylvain said, defensively. Was he really so selfish if he was here for Edelgard, doing what she had asked him to do, while everyone else sat around thinking about how the woes of Fhirdiad? “So I’m doing it. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” Felix said, sounding as annoyed as he was baffled. “But you look _crazy._ Do you have any idea what you’re doing, or are you just slamming things around like an ogre until something works?”

“I got a brick out,” Sylvain retorted, but he deflated just as fast, too, realizing how petty that sounded against an entire wall of bricks. Felix seemed to notice, because he raised an eyebrow and put his hands on his hips.

“You’re acting like a lunatic,” Felix told him. “Put your shirt back on and come downstairs before you hurt yourself.”

Sylvain lingered for a moment, but the longer he looked at Felix, the more he felt completely cowed. Sylvain put the brick down and picked up his shirt. He shook it free of dust and pulled it on. He went to button it but his hand sang out. It wasn’t intolerable, but it was distracting. It was purpling already.

“I kind of already did,” Sylvain admitted, but he said it like it wasn’t a big deal. Felix looked him over again, this time questioningly, and Sylvain held his hand up.

“Ah,” Felix said. “How many times?”

“Uh,” Sylvain trailed. “Maybe... three?”

Felix sighed and came up the stairs to him, each step slow and beleaguered, but he moved right up to Sylvain and took his hand between his own and inspected it. Sylvain hissed a little _ouch, careful_ when Felix prodded him right in the place he’d hammered. Felix glanced up at him briefly and then ran his finger across the spot a little more tenderly.

“You’re so reckless,” Felix admonished him, and he moved Sylvain’s fingers around methodically to test that he hadn’t damaged a joint or broken anything. Sylvain thought it was wholly unnecessary, but he grit his teeth through the discomfort anyway and let Felix have his way. “What if you broke a finger or something?”

“I’d ask Linhardt to fix it,” Sylvain said.

“Right,” Felix said, skeptically. He let go of Sylvain’s hand and scowled, setting about doing up the buttons of Sylvain’s shirt. He started from the bottom, which made Sylvain smile a little. Felix surely noticed but he ignored it, buttoning Sylvain right up to his collar. After a thought, Felix unbuttoned the top two again, leaving the valley of his pecs exposed. Felix scoffed. “Someday you’ll freeze.”

“Thanks, Fe,” Sylvain said. It slipped off his tongue like butter, and he felt the last of his temper vanish into thin air. “But I didn’t hurt my hand _that_ badly.”

Felix poked him in the gut hard. Sylvain yelped an _ow_ and then laughed, and then, with them standing so close, his laugh died: he was selfish, wasn’t he? Playing up a couple hammer strikes just to get Felix’s attention wasn’t too bad, as far as selfishness went, but... was Felix tired of him? Was Felix exhausted of Sylvain’s personal opera, denied his own time for his own problems because Sylvain was a whirlpool, sucking in everyone in his wake?

“What?” Felix asked, halfway between concern and annoyance. He mimed like he would poke Sylvain again, but he didn’t touch him this time. “You didn’t strain yourself, did you?”

Sylvain bit his lip. He supposed Felix wouldn’t do anything if he didn’t _want_ to.

“No, no,” Sylvain said, “I just... thought it was sweet, that’s all.”

“Sweet,” Felix repeated, deadpan, and then he turned, beckoning for Sylvain to follow. “Come on. I’m tired of watching you sit around moaning about everything and wandering the castle, but you’re just going to get seriously hurt doing this. Come down to the courtyard. We’re going to train.”

“What? I hurt my hand,” Sylvain argued. He didn’t understand the logic, but he stooped to pick up his coat and followed Felix back down the stairs anyway. He wondered if Felix was lonely. He wondered what about Remire made Felix prefer loneliness over his friends. Over _him_.

(Now _that _felt selfish.)

“Training is different from swinging around a hammer like a fool,” Felix argued. “Besides, you want to get back to your old form, right? You’ll only get there if you stop being lazy and work on it. Don't think I don't notice what you waste your time on.”

“I know,” Sylvain said. He draped his coat over his shoulder and caught up by taking the steps a couple at a time, eyes fixed on the back of Felix’s head. “I mean, I want to train. I want to look really, really good again. I want abs again.”

“You _do_ have abs,” Felix said, and his voice dipped argumentative. “Everyone has abs. It’s a muscle. It’s literally how you bend.”

“You know what I mean! I want to see them more. Like yours.”

“Why? You’re too big to rely on speed, so there’s no point in having some trim waistline. You should just take advantage of your size. You could be built like an ox if you just _trained_—“

Sylvain laughed, even as Felix continued to tell him off. They carried on the whole way down to the courtyard.


	24. The City

Sylvain had always been honest with himself. That, he thought, was very true. The tricky part was living honestly.

It was difficult to live honestly when his entire life had been an elaborate stage show. There were expectations for the heir to any house, but House Gautier felt particularly harsh. He had known it since he was very young, perhaps six or so, when he'd first started to understand what it meant to be Sylvain Jose Gautier.

If you were Sylvain Jose Gautier, you had a roof over your head, and food on your plate, but everything else had to be earned. Later he'd discovered that his was the easy life, because he was _allowed_ to earn it, but at six years old, he didn't have a hope of _understanding _the path laid out before him.

At six, his first duty was to learn to activate his crest. Within weeks, he had learned to channel the power of his own blood and illuminate the sigil, a low sound resonating in his ears each time, but it was nothing to be able to do it with some quiet concentration. Activating it in battle, he quickly learned, was far more difficult. The fluid movement his father performed to activate the Crest of Gautier was not easy to replicate. Sylvain tried, his body resisted him: he could not think to keep his knees aligned with his feet, his elbows just so with his ribs, and his thrusts strong and true all at the same time, much less draw on that inner reserve of power that the adults spoke of. Each time he strained to focus his mind on his crest, his parry or his footwork would suffer. The more relentlessly he reached for his goal, the further he ended up from it.

His father knocked him to the courtyard floor over and over again, waiting for the moment where Sylvain would figure out how to use the crest to defend himself, but Sylvain couldn't do it. He’d raged. He’d thrown his sword down onto the courtyard stones with a clang and balled his tiny fists and shouted, shouted as if his parents could gift him skill as easily as they gifted him anything else he wanted for. Nothing had helped.

Miklan had been the one to console him, voice gruff and exasperated but his sigh yielding. Miklan had put a big arm around Sylvain’s ribs and hauled him back down to the courtyard, and put the sword in his hand.

“You’re never going to learn like that, brat,” he said. Miklan had pushed him into a proper stance and adjusted his fingers on the hilt. “Look. If you blame your body for not doing things perfectly the first time, you’re never going to be good. It's on you to teach it what to do. _You._”

Miklan jabbed him in the forehead then, hard enough to hurt, but he'd smiled as he'd done it. Sylvain had smiled too. Sylvain had never been one for slow, dutiful improvement, but at that tender age, he’d believed his older brother had all the answers. Miklan was already a man by then. Surely even without a crest, he knew all the things older brothers were supposed to know and communicate to their younger siblings, especially much younger brothers: how to swing a sword, how to meet girls, how cruel the world could be, and how to get away with anything.

It had been comforting, in some way, to be told it would come with time, with practice. He did not have to be anything and everything at such a tender age.

Sylvain had to shore up his inner defences to resist the urge to be bitter and argue with himself for thinking of that moment so fondly. He didn’t want to dwell on the fact that someone could have told him that without also pitching him into a well and leaving him to freeze and die that same year — Miklan wasn’t all bad. He just couldn’t change.

Sylvain had to change. He _had_ to.

Ingrid and Felix’s conversation played over and over again in his head. It wasn’t good enough to sit around waiting for anyone to give him a chance to prove himself, or to lay out some goal for him. He was determined to make something of his life that he could take pride in, come fire or heavy rains or deepest snow. He didn't know what that something was, and for that he knew he had to get out into the city, to see Fhirdiad as it was, to better situate himself and see if there was anything that suited him.

For that, he needed Ingrid's blessing.

It took most of the morning to pluck up the courage to speak to Ingrid again. Even if she didn’t know that he’d listened in to the conversation, he worried that if she found out, it would be the last strike against him. He didn’t want to accidentally phrase himself in a way that suggested he had, in case it was suspicious. And that, in turn, just made him _more_ nervous.

Being nervous was not particularly new to Sylvain, but it had seldom ever stopped him, either.

He found Ingrid in the office with all the crates, and when he came to the open doorway, she must have assumed he was someone else: she asked how some errand of some sort was going, and if Captain de Gouges had gotten back to her. Sylvain let her run for a moment and then just said “hey.”

Ingrid looked up. It was miserable to watch the patience leave her eyes.

“I’m busy,” she said. “Can we talk later?”

He thought to tell her yes, if only to avoid stepping on her toes, but being relenting and obedient hadn’t gotten him anywhere so far. How many days had he waited for her to be ready to talk? If he waited, he would probably end up waiting a hundred more at least, so he stayed put and shook his head.

“You keep saying that,” he said. “When is later? Waiting doesn’t exactly help us get to know each other again.”

She fixed him with a completely unimpressed look and then turned her back to him. She crossed the room to the desk and set back to whatever it was she was doing. Sylvain bit back a wince.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s okay. I can just talk at you, if you’d prefer. You don’t have to say anything, I just... I want you to know some stuff, that’s all.”

“It’s not like you’re going to listen to me if I tell you not to,” Ingrid replied.

He supposed that was about as good as he was going to get, so Sylvain pulled up a seat for himself, turning the chair around backwards so he could fold his arms against its back and gaze at Ingrid while she worked.

“So,” he said, “I don’t know what Edelgard told you, but girls talk a lot, so I’m going to assume she ran over the basics: I’ve spent the past few years working in brothels, shockingly not as a prostitute.”

He waited for a laugh, but she glanced at him only briefly. She turned her eyes back to her papers, which she held together and tapped against the table until they were all properly aligned.

“I have to admit, I was pretty pissed when Hubert showed up,” he said. “Not nearly as pissed as last time, when he nabbed me from Gautier, but still... I thought things were going pretty well, at the time. It’s only been the past couple months where I’ve realized that I was just wasting my life away. I shut out my friends, and my friends are the only family I have... and even if it’s been overwhelming at times, it’s good for me to be back here.”

She crossed the room to retrieve a crate, and Sylvain rose to help her when she stooped to pick it up, but despite its size she lifted it, notched it to her hip, and carried it back to the table. She set it down with a thud that rattled the rickety tabletop. Sylvain sighed.

“I mean, I escorted Bernadetta home, and I found Felix, and we cleared out a bunch of bandits, and I got Felix back to civilization, helped get him a haircut,” he said. He paused. That list didn’t seem very impressive, laid out like that — probably just your average weekday for someone as industrious as Ingrid. “To say nothing of what I want to do here, to help Edelgard out, to see what I can do for Fhirdiad. Maybe I could even...”

He pushed the thought away and swallowed his breath.

“So that’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, finally. “And with your blessing, I'd like to start helping out here, even if it's just mucking stalls. Maybe help you with patrols in the city. Hell, I'll scrub dishes.”

Still, nothing. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. She knew him inside and out, and now was just one of those moments where being known was painful.

"Can you please just… yell at me?" Sylvain asked, finally.

“Why?” she asked.

“Uh... Maybe you’d feel better if you got it out?” He knew her, too; he knew Ingrid hated to bottle her feelings, and it was scary to be in a position with her where even yelling seemed too much. "And because I hate that when you look at me, it’s like you're seeing Dimitri."

"I'm not seeing Dimitri," Ingrid said, pointedly.

"Not literally," Sylvain said. "I mean you're seeing someone destroying themselves, and no matter what you do, you can't really stop them. You can't stop me. Only I can do anything about myself. And I’m trying, but then again... so did he."

For whatever reason, that pulled a sigh of defeat from her. She put down the papers in her hands with such force that the pile slid and almost toppled, and she pushed it back into one pile. Sylvain smiled uneasily at her, knowing he’d just gotten somewhere, even though he didn’t know where that was.

"I absolutely hate that you're smart enough to know exactly what you're doing is wrong,” Ingrid said, “but you keep doing it anyway.”

"I know," he said. "I know that part too."

She shook her head.

"Right. And what good is that, if you’re not doing anything about it?”

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I want to do something about it. I came here because I want to be a better man. And if I could be even half as virtuous as you, I’d be a great man.”

Ingrid sighed. For a moment she was quiet, her gaze fixed just beyond him, and Sylvain waited with his tongue pressed against the back of his teeth. He felt like a child, _always_ like a child, struggling to grow out of his knack for trouble. Ingrid leant against the desk, folding her arms just under her breasts, and Sylvain let his gaze fall to the floor.

“Do you want to go into the city, Sylvain?" she asked.

Sylvain sat up straighter than a dog being offered a particularly meaty bone. He looked up and found her looking plenty cautious, and she raised a hand in warning.

“Before you get excited,” she said, firmly. “Are you really ready to see the city? There are a _lot_ of refugees from Gautier, and if anyone recognizes you, they might have some strong feelings about that."

“So be it,” he said. He was ready. He knew it. He couldn't let anything stop him, and he certainly had to get out of this damned castle. "I want to go."

Ingrid watched him for a moment, and then she sighed.

"Well, I’m taking Linhardt into town for some research thing, and you can accompany me," Ingrid said, “_but_ you don’t leave my side. I’m not kidding. I’m giving you a chance to—”

Sylvain burst to his feet. He meant to sweep her up in his arms, but she took a step back and raised a hand, ready to smack him if he got too enthusiastic — the kind of enthusiasm he used to dish out on the regular since they were children, scooping her up and mashing her up against him. Instead he hovered, balancing on his toes and on the cusp of crashing into her, and she just held out a single finger with the same power that Felix might hold out a sword.

“You won’t regret it,” he promised her.

Once Ingrid was done with her paperwork the two of them fetched Linhardt from the library, where he was once more sleeping over a pile of documents. They waited patiently while Linhardt prepared what he could have had ready if he possessed even an ounce of organizational skill: a leather satchel full of little glass vials, corks and sticks of wax, a notebook and pen, and countless other instruments that Sylvain couldn’t really identify. None of it looked new or surprising to Ingrid, which made Sylvain the dunce amongst them, so he was inclined to pretend he knew instead of asking.

It was decided that they would ride into the city. Though it was a short walk, Ingrid preferred to ride in case there was trouble. Sylvain had thought the same during the war. One never knew when a riot was about to break out, or a mob calling for an execution, or a brawl over something banal but rare: food, drink, salt, wax, and so on. He always preferred to be on horseback when he had the choice, especially because it made it much harder to get overwhelmed by the swarms of people.

On the way out of the front door, they passed Felix standing on the front steps. He looked a little surprised to see Sylvain heading out with Ingrid, but he said nothing.

"We're going into the city," Sylvain said, a little proud. "Want to come?"

"I'll pass today," Felix said. "You two should catch up."

Ingrid pursed her lips and carried on down the stairs. Sylvain followed her down, still craning his neck to look back at Felix.

"Okay, see you at dinner. Want to spar tonight?" he asked, and he stopped a couple steps down, just low enough that he could still see Felix's head. Felix leaned over the stone wall to look down at him. Sylvain raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun blinding him off the snowy stones. Felix looked pleased to be asked.

"Sure," Felix agreed.

"Find us some proper training lances?"

Felix nodded. Sylvain glanced at Ingrid steadily putting distance between them, and then he smiled up at Felix with an unspoken declaration of victory. Progress was being made. Felix sighed and the corners of his mouth twitched up the barest bit.

"I'm happy for you," he said.

Sylvain grinned. His heart soared. He looked up at Felix's handsome face, relishing being _happy_ in that instant, and how Felix was happy for him. With the impulse control of a child, he reached up and seized Felix by the collar. Felix didn’t move back fast enough and could only frantically grab the stone wall so he wasn’t yanked right over it, but Sylvain pulled him low anyway and planted a kiss on his mouth, and then released him before he could get smacked.

“Sylvain!” Felix groused. He flushed red. “What’s your problem?”

A lot of things, apparently.

“What?” Sylvain replied, but it was hard to feign innocence with Felix. “I'm happy. See you tonight?”

“You’d best pray I’m still here,” Felix retorted.

Sylvain grinned and Felix gave him the finger. Sylvain turned and caught up with Ingrid, who had stopped to look. She raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Hey,” Sylvain said. “It was a joke.”

“Right,” Ingrid replied. “And you just _had_ to embarrass him in front of everyone.”

Sylvain shrugged. Embarrassing Felix was half the point.

The situation in Fhirdiad castle's stables left much to be desired, particularly compared to Enbarr’s Imperial stables. While the structure was the same as it always had been, and the floors were at least swept, the magnificent destriers of earlier years were long gone. Sylvain had watched rows of them topple with his own eyes five years earlier, and he imagined that in an annexed Faerghus, the breeding programs run by the noble houses had all but shuttered in favour of focusing on more practical stock suited to farming. Now the stables were full of horses of lower standing: a few coursers, a few pegasus, and then endless stalls of rouncey horses. Sylvain, ever a lover of horses, felt disappointed. The consolation was that Horse fit right in, at the very least.

“Different, isn’t it?” Ingrid said. She walked past him and flagged down a stable boy, who ran off to the tack room. She turned her attention back to Sylvain. “It was so much more grand when we were kids.”

She tapped her boots against one of the timbers at the door, knocking off a pick of snowy muck. Sylvain did the same. Linhardt sighed and followed suit, but he did so in a grudging way, as though it were a great effort to not track slush all over the place. Sylvain had half a mind to trip him in a snowbank just to see the look on his face, but he reserved that plan for next time he saw a clean one. Inside the city, all the snow was brown with mud and silt.

“Yeah, but there’s someone I want you to meet,” Sylvain said.

He reached to take her hand. She held it away from him, and he shrugged it off and went on ahead to find Horse. She followed him down the aisle anyway. When he found Horse, he gestured towards her though he were introducing Ingrid to the most splendid mount a man could dream of.

“Meet Horse,” Sylvain said. “Don’t let her appearance deter you; she’s got the soul of a much younger horse, because she made it all the way here from Enbarr. Almost twice over!”

Ingrid was kind, unlike Felix — she looked upon Horse with an odd but not altogether unpleasant pity, and then she looked at Sylvain as though he were joking.

“You really took a horse this old all the way across the continent?”

“Well, yeah. The old girl deserved to see the sights,” Sylvain said. He let himself into the stall, and Ingrid followed. She put a hand into her satchel andpulled out a couple carrot tops, no doubt saved from the kitchens. Sylvain beamed. “I couldn’t leave her to get auctioned off or passed around until she dropped dead.”

Ingrid took a moment to feed Horse the vegetable scraps, and she spoke to Horse in soft, kind tones for a moment before Sylvain’s persistent gaze prompted her to remember he was there.

“Unbelievable,” she said, finally.“Your longest commitment to a woman is a horse.”

“Hey now,” Sylvain said, tightly. “My longest commitment is to you.”

Ingrid almost flinched.

“Even interrupted,” he pressed on, “you’re still my best friend.”

“I’m surprised,” she said. She sounded a little too honest about it, like she genuinely thought Sylvain had fewer cares for her, and that made him cringe.

“You don’t really think that’s changed for me, do you?” he asked, a little terse.

“Should I leave, or go on ahead without you?” Linhardt asked. “This is touching and all but I’m feeling a little bit ignored."

Ingrid had been about to say something, but whatever it was, she pushed it down. Instead she exited the stall to check on her own mount, a splendid pegasus that Sylvain was delighted to recognize. Ingrid had owned several pegasi through the war, but this one was one of the oldest, and her yellow-tipped wings were tinged brown now with age. Ingrid went right into caring for her own mount and pretending Sylvain had vanished into the crisp air.

“Did I spoil your conversation?” Linhardt asked.

Sylvain reached out of the stall to give him a single shove to the shoulder. Linhardt was nearly bowled over by it, muttering an offended “ow” and rubbing his shoulder as he straightened up again, as though Sylvain had punched him or something worse.

“Yeah, moron,” Sylvain muttered, under his breath. “You kinda did!”

“Sheesh,” Linhardt said.

In the poorest of times, there had always been the Church.

If Sylvain were to think of the primary reason why the people of Fhirdiad had welcomed the Church’s imposition on their city, and the transformation of their castle into the Archbishop’s stronghold, that would have been it. The Church of Seiros had always been there before when famine or disease struck, so in theory, the war effort shouldn't have been much different. What had the people expected? For the homeless and besieged Church to continue supporting them as it always had? Sylvain had thought it ludicrous at the time, and even more ludicrous in hindsight: when the church had been unable — or unwilling — to provide, the people had been furious. But, curiously, they did not curse the Archbishop Rhea, whose victimhood in the whole affair pushed Sylvain to clenching his teeth so hard he felt like he had a constant pressure headache, nor did they curse the church.

Instead they cursed Dimitri, their king, the man who had failed to maintain Faerghus’ strength and allowed the Empire to threaten them all so handily. They cursed each other, as if they had been the problem all along.

Mobs of desperate people had frequently bombarded the castle and the noble houses, breaking windows with stones and screaming outside the doors whenever some person with authority dared reveal themselves. On more than one occasion, there had been close calls — Mercedes had been wounded on the back of her head from a thrown bottle, and the resulting scar had her wearing a cap for years.

Now, there was neither church nor Faerghus royal family to blame. When Fhirdiad burned, Dimitri’s uncle had taken his life, and that of his son, too. Those who didn’t die in the flames had fled, and Sylvain thought they were living much like him: impoverished, unpopular, the last vestiges of a former kingdom, now condemned to a lifetime of shame for what they had or hadn’t done.

The people remained. The people suffered.

Going through the city, Sylvain saw Felix’s old point — that Edelgard’s aid was only sustaining a status quo, and that things were not improving fast enough. Her efforts in strategically building new housing and then demolishing the old did not translate so readily to Fhirdiad, where homes condemned four years ago as uninhabitable were often still being lived in, and the tenants saw them grow more and more dangerous as people refused to expend effort or materials on repairs that would just be destroyed in a matter of time. Ingrid and Linhardt explained why Sylvain should never go into private homes unless absolutely necessary: people were injured by collapsing floors often, and people slept with lit lanterns because rats and cockroaches would boldly creep right into beds under the cover of darkness. A parent who let the light burn out during the night could wake to find their child covered in rats as big as barn cats, nibbling at their flesh.

And there were brothels, too — the first that Sylvain spotted was so small and unobtrusive that at first he might have mistaken it for a shack. A red-haired woman sat out front, and she was wearing at least three petticoats. As Faerghus settled into winter, the poor would layer their entire wardrobe in order to stay warm, but Sylvain thought it was just as likely that she was destitute enough to have nowhere to keep spare clothing but her body.

She noticed him looking at her and she waved. Impulsively, he waved back with a smile. Ingrid frowned.

“Sylvain, listen. There’s about sixty brothels in this part of the city, and a lot of houses being used for the same,” she said. “There's a _lot_ of temptation. You really have to be careful.”

While Sylvain generally had very little shame and had learned not to judge, his few brushes with very poor neighbourhoods had been enough to teach him to avoid brothels in bigger cities anyway. On more than one occasion he’d found himself in an illegal lodging house with a prostitute: the rooms were always shared with a few other couples, the only privacy cloth partitions that didn’t quite reach the floor, and so he'd laboured to focus on his own hard-on rather than the goings on of people around him. The risk of being arrested was never particularly pleasant, either, but it was better than paying some man or woman willing to lean over in an alleyway. That, he’d never stomached more than once.

But how to tell her he was better than that? Ingrid was pointedly waiting for a reply.

“Point out the best one,” he joked. "So I know whether I'm in the wrong place."

The look she threw him could have thrown him from his horse, and he lobbed her an apologetic look before she could even reply.

“I’m not telling you this to help you get into trouble,” Ingrid said, curtly. “I’m telling you why I don’t want you wandering around here, and I’m _warning_ you. Do not sleep with anyone, not here, not in a brothel, anywhere.”

“Are you serious?”

He felt a little bit indignant that she felt the need to tell him that, but when it slipped from his mouth it felt like a genuine question: was she really making that kind of a request? What was he, some sort of insatiable monster? He hadn’t gotten properly laid in weeks, and a man had _needs, _but that didn’t mean he was about to plunder a glorified refugee camp for a desperate partner.

“She’s very serious about you not dying,” Linhardt piped up. His voice suddenly dipped low with judgement, too, but it wasn't Ingrid's roiling frustration. It was painfully clinical instead, which somehow felt worse. “We’re in the middle of disease outbreaks.”

_Oh. _And there was that, too, he supposed. Sylvain felt his bravado vanish.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I thought you were... never mind.”

They arrived at a large stone building with a long porch. Linhardt looked plenty ready to bail from the conversation, as he slid from the saddle before even properly stopping his horse, and Sylvain had to lean across the gap between them and take the reins. He felt deeply annoyed. Was Ferdinand the only one amongst the Adrestian-born Black Eagles who knew how to handle a damned horse properly?

“I’m just going to go in,” Linhardt said, “Thankfully! I don’t want to hear _anything_ about your right to fornicate.”

He went into the building.

That bothered Sylvain even more. Linhardt had a fiancé, didn’t he? Hadn’t he ever, even once, experienced some sort of desire for another person, or for physical company? Sylvain just didn’t understand it. He didn’t know how anyone survived like this, untouched, uncomforted. His skin practically crawled at the idea of being surrounded by unfriendly people for so long, with no one to call his, even for just a night. How did people get married and let their beds go cold without having affairs every damn week?

Sylvain thought he would rather die than live that way forever. Of course, he needed boundaries, and moderation. He knew that

But he felt very alone.

“Thought I was what?” Ingrid asked.

He glanced at her and her big frown. He felt like his frustration must be visible; it certainly felt impossible to control.

“I thought you were just looking for another way to give me a hard time,” Sylvain said. “No matter what I say, you're mad at me.”

“Because you’re acting like you can just show up and wait for my forgiveness,” Ingrid replied. “Sylvain, what was that? _The best one_? This is pathetic.”

“It was a bad joke,” he replied. “Ingrid, I’m just trying to talk to you.”

“I know,” she said. She dismounted. “But talking doesn’t matter. Action does.”

Sylvain dismounted, too, so quickly that Horse shifted nervously.

“I don’t care how reasonable or charming or friendly you are,” Ingrid said. “I am _not_ the bad guy here for telling you to stay out of the brothels. You’re barely sober, you don’t respect women, and you’re not doing anything here to make life better for anyone, so the least you can do is listen to me.”

Sylvain opened his mouth to reply, but he didn’t say anything. Apologizing or making excuses weren’t going to work with her right now, not when they would seem cheap. Nothing that was demanded ever came across as genuine.

“Okay,” he said, finally. “I’m listening.”

“Thank you,” Ingrid said, a little sharply. “Now let’s catch up with Linhardt.”

Sylvain just nodded, though he felt a little tired of feeling barred from defending himself or arguing his own case. They tied up their mounts and Sylvain followed Ingrid in, lingering a couple paces behind. He looked up at the door to the building before they passed under its eaves; a wooden sign hung from iron posts, carved with an image of Lady Seiros, but her face had been chipped out by a chisel and mallet. Sylvain grimaced. A public hospital, he was sure.

It was confirmed for him a moment later when he followed Ingrid through a very crowded front lobby. Despite the long benches installed up and down the room, people still huddled in the aisles, sometimes sitting in clusters, other times finding a place to lean against the wall. Sylvain kept his eyes low and tucked his chin into the fur of his collar; he did not want to breathe their air, and he felt a tiny attack on himself every time he heard a cough. Ingrid did not shrink away or look disgusted at all, and Sylvain thought that was very brave of her. These places made him nervous. A year or so ago he’d ended up at a public hospital after a street brawl. Though they’d bandaged his wounds, he hadn’t been able to afford lodging so he’d spent the night on a couch in the ward and then been turned out again in the morning. The experience had been thoroughly unpleasant, but he imagined it was much better than this place, which looked even more miserable.

It was a far cry from the white curtains erected in Enbarr’s palace lobby, with physicians prodding squealing babies to see that they were appropriately fat and happy.

He nudged Ingrid, who moved away.

“What?”

“This place looks bad,” Sylvain said. “Is it safe?”

“Not really,” Ingrid said. “This is just what Fhirdiad looks like now.”

He felt his stomach sinking. He looked around the crowded lobby and edged closer to Ingrid, who had turned her attention back to the nurse at the desk. The people huddled together, children sleeping in their mothers’ arms and couples with their arms around each other. A lone man stared into the distance, his clothing caked with so much gutter mud that the whole of his outfit was one mass of colour. Another woman sewed quietly, and when her thread ran short, she stopped and pulled a thread from the hem of her own skirt in order to keep going. Everyone looked unwell, if not because they were ill, then because the dim light and crowded conditions had made them seem so.

“What are we doing here?” Sylvain asked, very quietly.

“We’re waiting for Linhardt to collect some samples.”

“Samples for what?”

“Cholera,” Ingrid said, pointedly. “There’s a potential case now.”

Sylvain could see Linhardt deeper in the room, standing with a couple of young physicians and going over something. Linhardt seemed remarkably bored, but he was evidently listening, for he nodded periodically and looked between them with a quiet duty. Sylvain itched to go over and eavesdrop, but he didn’t.

“I thought it wasn’t supposed to get bad until the winter ended,” Sylvain said. He paused. “Maybe I’ll wait outside.”

“Sylvain,” Ingrid said, a little warning.

“Or right here,” he amended, falling silent.

Someone called Ingrid’s name. She looked their way and immediately smiled, making her way over. Sylvain wasn’t sure if he was supposed to linger or follow her, but before he could make a decision, Linhardt finished his conversation with his company and made his way back over. He had a glass phial of some clear liquid in his hand. Sylvain looked at it curiously.

“Samples,” Linhardt said.

“_That's_ cholera?”

“No, of water,” Linhardt said. “Would you help me seal it? I want to be sure there’s no risk of contamination.”

“Okay,” Sylvain agreed. Linhardt gestured for him to follow, and Sylvain tailed him out the door and onto the front porch of the hospital. There he produced a stick of wax from his satchel.

Sylvain figured out what he was doing. Linhardt used a little bit of fire magic to soften the wax, and Sylvain held the phial still while he dribbled molten wax around it. The air outside was so cold that it seized up almost immediately, so it took a couple tries to get it fully covered.

“So uh,” Sylvain said, fingers going numb from the cold as he turned the little phial around, “how many people is this thing killing these days?”

“This... thing?” Linhardt said, likely just to be obtuse.

“Cholera,” Sylvain said.

“Ah! It ends a couple hundred lives a year, generally,” Linhardt said, “usually just in very small bursts here or there, but the outbreaks have been getting worse and more difficult to contain. According to documentation, the same thing happened in the years before the Great Plague that Lady Cornelia ended.”

“So we’re looking at another,” Sylvain said. He knew enough about the outbreak to get the gist of it, but he also remembered the radical changes that had been implemented to quell it. He supposed the city was badly damaged enough by the torching that it didn't matter now — progress undone as if it had never happened at all.

“Most likely,” Linhardt said.

Cholera was, of course, a brutal disease. It was not glamorous -– not that any disease was, but Sylvain had seen enough operas about the morally pure perishing unjustly in public hospitals to know that any romantic worth their salt could make a dramatic tragedy out of death. Not cholera, though. Cholera was just shitting yourself to death, shitting until your body couldn’t shit anymore, and your blood was so deprived of moisture that it oozed from the body like beef jelly, and then you died. On the other hand, Sylvain supposed, its victims were aware of their suffering the whole time. It could have made for some decent soliloquies on the inevitability of death, or the suffering inherent to the human condition, or some such thing, if any opera company on the planet was willing to get their starlets to lounge in filth. He thought that in an opera with cholera, the lovers would almost certainly not contract it themselves.

“This stuff is a world away from crests,” Sylvain remarked.

Linhardt stepped off the porch and went back towards the horses. Sylvain followed, casting a glance over his shoulder. He supposed Ingrid wouldn’t be mad for leaving if he was with Linhardt. Linhardt unbuckled the flaps on his saddlebags and stashed the sample away, and then looked back to Sylvain.

“It is,” he said, dryly. “I’d love nothing more than to just bury myself in my research day and night right now, but when we have little outbreaks like this, it’s important I go out. Otherwise I might miss something.”

“Like what?”

“I have a theory,” Linhardt said, “that we can find the source of the outbreaks by tracking the water.”

“Huh,” Sylvain trailed. It didn't make much sense to him. Cornelia had revolutionized Fhirdiad almost three decades ago by building a sewage system that kept the city cleaner, and a cleaner city was a healthier one. Sylvain thought if it was not the sewage at all, but rather the water, that was a fair bit more daunting. "What makes you figure it's the water?”

“A lot of things that would go over your head, I’m sure,” Linhardt said, “but when I was going through the documentation for the last outbreak, I found a report about a number of people in the midst of it who did not die. For one, labourers at a brewery, where they would drink the beers during the day, and two other work houses which provided water for their employees so they did not have to go to the public wells.”

“Huh,” Sylvain repeated. “So... what? You’re tracking to see what kind of water people are drinking from, and if they’re all coming from the same place, you know that the water there is contaminated?”

Linhardt actually smiled.

“Oh good,” he said. “I don’t have to explain it again.”

Sylvain chuckled.

But then Sylvain felt an odd sensation — a sharp tug on his belt, and a drop in its weight. He glanced down to see the tie being cut on his coin purse, and an offending hand clutching the bag. That person took off running, bag in-hand.

“Hey!” Sylvain yelled, and he took off running after them.

Linhardt called something after him, and Sylvain was sure he knew what it is was, but he wasn’t about to stop. It seemed embarrassing to him to be a victim to something as cliché as having his purse strings cut, so he tore after the thief as fast as his long legs could carry him. The thief — a boy or girl of perhaps seven or eight — ducked through the crowds and traffic with ease, leaving Sylvain hollering after them and struggling to not get cut-off.

“Get back here, you little shit!” he shouted, ignoring all the heads that turned. He shoved and elbowed his way through whatever gaps in the crowd he could find, scarcely keeping his eyes on the child, who wove in and out of his sight like a hare through the underbrush. Once or twice, the child looked back at him in alarm, clearly having not expected him to give chase for that long, but through willpower alone, Sylvain persisted.

The child ducked into an alley. Sylvain followed and just barely saw the child slip into the back door of a building, and he followed without hesitating. He found himself in the store room of a shop, and several people screamed at him when he burst in. He ignored them, rounding their work tables and shelves until he found the child crouched behind a bench. It was a little girl.

Sylvain picked her up by the collar of her shirt and hefted her out, still ignoring the people yelling at him. He set her on her feet but kept his grip on her collar, and he thrust the other in her face, palm open.

“My purse, please,” he ordered.

The girl burst into noisy tears.

Oh no.

“Hey,” Sylvain said, but he could feel his voice softening. “Don’t— come on! You stole from me, no tears, now.”

The girl went on sobbing for a moment. Sylvain felt the awkwardness of all of the employees looking at him with judgement, so he straightened up and asked: “Is this your kid?” They all declined, and one of them told him to get out and take the brat with him. Sylvain wasn’t sure what to do other than concede, so he wrapped an arm around the girl’s waist and carried her right out the back door with him. She yelled and kicked the whole time, but he thought she might run off if he let go, and her fingers were dug so tightly into his purse that he knew he'd have a hard time snatching it back without getting rough. Fortunately, there was a broken crate in the alleyway, so he plunked her down in there like a farmer might stick a rabbit in a pen. She couldn’t run without climbing out first.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve crying after stealing from me, kid,” Sylvain said. She went on sobbing, wiping at her red and tear-streaked face with the backs of her hands. She was so dirty that her tears left clean tracks on her face, and Sylvain felt himself struggle to keep up any level of intimidation. “Kid. Kid, come on.”

“Please!!” the girl wailed.

Sylvain leant against the wall of the crate. He sighed when he realized she was wearing one of the most threadbare coats he had ever seen, with great holes patched with rags and the knees in her leggings worn completely out. Her bare knees were white with cold. Sylvain swallowed his breath.

“Okay, I’ll cut you a deal,” he said, “you give me my coin purse, I’m going to buy you a new coat, and then we part ways, okay? You’re going to freeze like this.”

“I’m hungry!”

“Okay,” Sylvain conceded. “And we’ll get you something to eat, too. Okay? What’s your name?”

“Elise,” she said, through sniffles.

“Sylvain,” he replied. He scooped her up under the arms to lift her out of the crate, and she groused at him even as he set her on her feet. He held onto her for a moment. “Don’t run, or I’ll...” He didn’t know what he would do. What were you supposed to do with kids who misbehaved other than beat them? He certainly wasn’t about to do that. But little Elise looked up at him, waiting for his threat. He finished lamely: “I’ll just chase you down again and nobody’s going to be happy about it.”

"I promise!" she cried.

He let her go.

She immediately ran.

Sylvain did not quite catch her; the matted fur of her hood slipped from his grasp before he could grab her, and he cursed aloud as he gave chase once more. His chest heaved as she headed back into the crowds of the main road, but his path was cut off not by clueless pedestrians or carthorses, but by a very large red-haired man who deliberately stepped into his way. Sylvain tried to dodge him, but the man shoved him.

Sylvain barely avoided hitting the ground. Still, he fruitlessly looked after the girl's wake in the crowd.

“That kid stole my purse,” Sylvain said. “Move!”

“I don’t think I will,” the man replied.

“What, you going to mug a guy who has nothing on him?” Sylvain demanded. He realized very quickly that there was some scheme at work. He didn’t know what, but he felt it in his gut, and that feeling doubled over when a few other people appeared at the neck of the alley. They advanced, and Sylvain took a few step backwards. He glanced back at the storehouse door he’d gone through earlier, but someone snapped it shut.

Shit.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

“You’re him. You're Gautier,” the man replied.

_Shit_.

Someone was behind him, too. He started to turn to see how close they were, but before he could, an arm locked around his neck from behind with such force that he was dragged back. Sylvain grabbed onto that arm with one hand to buy himself some breath, and with his other he reached for the sword in his belt.

His assailant was maybe not trying to kill him; Sylvain knew a blood choke, and this wasn’t one of them. His assailant was trying to drag it out and make him hurt.

Sylvain felt that hurt as he took a blow to the head — a punch. He blinked. Blood caught on his eyelashes. He didn’t feel it, but he knew it was his own from instinct alone. He staggered but he struggled, and he found his sword’s hilt, but he couldn’t draw it. His vision swam. His chest was vibrating from the pounding of his heart, and he felt like he couldn’t move. He couldn’t—

The man threw him. Sylvain found himself on his knees on the main street, dizzy, dragging air into his lungs. Twice a day, he told himself — if these guys didn’t beat him senseless, he was going to ask Felix to train with him twice a day. He rose to his feet. Foot traffic tapered off immediately as people saw what was happening and stopped dead in their tracks to gawk. Someone whooped, and then another did.

The men and women surrounded him. Sylvain wheezed out:

“I get it,” he said. “You... you’re all from Gautier, right?”

The lead man scoffed. Sylvain looked between them. They were from Gautier; he knew it as well as the back of his own hand, for both the style of their coats and that faint accent, the kind of regional twinge you only got growing upon its northern border. They were from Gautier. It sank into Sylvain’s heart like lead. He wiped his free hand across his forehead. He had an ugly cut across his eyebrow, and it stung both his head and his bruised hand to wipe at it.

A cut didn’t really matter to him. He kept his grip on his sword’s hilt, and that was the only thing stopping them from taking turns beating the shit out of him. Sylvain knew if he really wanted to, he could draw that sword and fight them off, but he also didn’t want to kill them. He’d already taken so much from them that it seemed selfish to take their lives, too.

It was strange to sympathize with people who had clearly been waiting to jump him the moment they’d seen him in the city.

But it wasn’t meant to be. Someone whistled loudly. All of them turned to look, and they watched Ingrid elbow her way through the crowd and come out in front with her own sword drawn. The crowd shrank back; some people seemed to instinctively move on, having decided the show was over.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded, walking out between them. Despite being scarcely half the weight of any man in the circle, they all drew back at the sight of her, their fists uncurling. Her knights joined them, too, all with swords at the ready.

“Caught this fellow chasing down my little girl,” the man said, pointedly.

Sylvain had never felt a crowd sour so quickly. Ingrid looked at Sylvain, and Sylvain explained quickly: “Kid was desperate enough to steal my coin purse. I offered to buy her a new coat. You really let her go out in winter like that, hungry and cold? What kind of father are you?”

All eyes turned back to the man. Ingrid frowned.

“One who used to be able to provide for his family,” the man retorted. “‘Til Faerghus collapsed. You want to take responsibility for that, too?

Sylvain swallowed his breath. He took his hand off the sword.

“Alright,” Ingrid said. “Spat over. Move along.”

The man turned to go, but before he went, he added to Sylvain: “I hope you burn in hell, traitor.”

“Walk away right now,” Ingrid ordered, lifting her voice, “or I’ll arrest you for disturbing the peace.”

The man didn’t need to threaten him with more. All of them dispersed immediately, and the crowd began to go. Sylvain gingerly pressed at his throat to see where it hurt, but it wasn’t too bad. His coat was splattered with slush and mud, and blood still dripped freely from his hairline. The man must have been wearing a ring or something that lacerated when he swung, but Sylvain wasn’t too concerned. Even a small head wound bled dramatically, even when it wasn’t threatening.

Ingrid supervised the crowds for a moment, and then she looked at him. She winced. Sylvain thought he must have looked like a frightful mess to prompt her to drop her disdain for him. Maybe he should have gotten jumped much earlier.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

"Yeah, I'm sure it looks worse than it actually is."

He’d expected her to be angry at him for taking off, or say he deserved it for what he’d let Gautier become for its people, but she just shook her head with pity. He could tell she was still reluctant, but it was an odd relief to not be denied some sort of comfort.

“Here,” she said, and she reached for the hood on his coat. She rose on her toes to get it up and on his head. “Let’s make sure you keep a lower profile.”

“They really respect you,” Sylvain remarked.

“Yes,” Ingrid said, testily. “They do. But ugh, look at you. This is why I was reluctant to bring you into the city. You don’t exactly have a good reputation in Faerghus…”

Sylvain frowned.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t say I didn't expect it to happen _eventually_.”

“Mm,” Ingrid hummed. “Well, are you okay to stay here with us while we finish work, or do you want me to bring you back?”

Sylvain paused. He wasn’t sure he wanted to linger amongst crowds that housed people that hated him enough to take any chance to get a swing in, but he also didn’t want to disrupt their work. He also thought he’d rather stay out in the crisp air than risk going back to the castle and falling into a self-loathing spiral at having lost a few coins. He just shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’ll stay. I’ll just... keep my hood up, and my mouth shut.”

Ingrid nodded.

“Okay,” she said, and she started to walk back towards... something. Sylvain didn’t really know what directions he had run in, but he trusted she knew, so he followed her. His head throbbed. His stupid hand throbbed. His heart throbbed. But something else bothered him most.

“Ingrid,” Sylvain prodded. “That kid barely had a coat on. It’s going to freeze overnight. Can we find her and do something about that? Her jackass father won't.”

Ingrid kept her back to him, but she shook her head.

“Probably not,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll find someplace warm enough to sleep or hide away in, and someone will give her food. There’s thousands of kids like her in the city, Sylvain — that’s why it’s all hands on deck.”

Sylvain thought of that little girl’s knees, and how white with cold they were. If she didn’t get frostbite today, she certainly would tonight, when the temperatures plummeted again. Sylvain imagined where she might go. Did she live in one of the houses Ingrid described, with the broken floors and the lights on? Was she kicked out of the house during all hours of the day or night to take in clients? Did they drink away what little money they had?

“What kind of a father gets their kid involved in things like that?” Sylvain asked. “She was terrified.”

“Some people steal to survive,” Ingrid reminded him.

“That only goes so far as an excuse,” Sylvain replied, a little terse. He walked quicker so he could be at her side. “If my kid were out there with ripped up knees and a shit coat, I’d give her my own. I wouldn’t get her involved. I wouldn’t put her in a position where she could get hurt.”

“I know,” Ingrid said. She didn’t know, actually. She just agreed and thought that was the same thing as knowing, as understanding. But Sylvain couldn’t correct her; she didn’t see Sylvain’s fatherhood as any more than a theory, and Sylvain itched to tell her otherwise, but he couldn’t bear to be hated more. He was a _different_ sort of deadbeat.

Ingrid took his silence for something else.

“Not everyone is lucky enough to have fathers like ours.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said, smoothly, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile. “Lucky.”

Ingrid frowned.

“Sorry.”

“Why? It’s fine,” he said.

Ingrid glanced at him sidelong and waited, but he didn’t want to give that to her. He didn't want to go there.

“But what do _I_ do, then?” he asked. “How do I help?”

Ingrid pursed her lips.

“I don’t know, Sylvain,” she said. “That’s up to you to figure out.”


	25. Only Us

A [letter](https://i.imgur.com/1fLSqWy.jpg):

_Dear Edelgard,_

_There's something I should have told you before._

_I know that’s a heavy way to start a letter, but I wanted you to know in case I die here. I don’t know if Fódlan can really change, but maybe this will help you try._

_People with crests don't have a monopoly on being bad people. My brother was a bad person, but he wasn't always that way. He got worse and worse over the years. He wasn’t disinherited until I was seventeen. That’s a long time to share a roof with someone whose life you ruined by being born, you know? And I think I've let you and a lot of others believe that he was all bad. When he was disinherited, I told a lot of people, even my friends, that Miklan tried to kill me and that our parents had enough. People believed it._

_But the truth is Miklan had a lot of bastards. A lot of kids._

_I guess he thought that if he married right and had just one kid with a crest, that kid would be his ticket to stay. And if I died, his kid would be next in line, ensuring he would always have a roof over his head and a full belly and a title to wield. Of course, a guy without a crest has to get real lucky to have a kid with one. It’s possible, but even guys _ _with_ _ crests pump out a bunch without. Thing is, you can’t marry that many women, and a woman can only be pregnant so many times in a year, and the older I got, the faster his clock was ticking._

_When our old man had enough, all I kept thinking was... it’s one thing for some family of means to be having kid until they get a child with a crest. But what about a woman on her own? Even if he intended to look after them, Miklan is dead now. I killed him. No one is going to provide for those kids now._

_And I know what you're thinking. "Sylvain, he wouldn't have done that if the crest system didn't incentivize the pursuit of power!" I don't want to have that argument again. He chose to be that way. He chose to be a part of the system. You can't just change a couple hundred people with crests. You have to change _ _everyone._

_I’d never be able to say this to your face, by the way. I’m a coward through and through. I don’t know what I’m doing. I know it’s up to me to figure that out but I never prepared for any of this. I’m really not the revolutionary you expected but I’m doing what I can._

_Sorry I didn’t couch any of this in secrecy or false names. I figure if it’s intercepted, I’m dead whether I do or not, and I don’t want them to doubt how much I want you to prove it's possible and reforge Fódlan._

_I’ve enclosed my report._

_Ingrid and Felix are well. Send everyone my love._

_Sylvain Jose Gautier_

There was something about letter-writing that felt cathartic. Even if it wasn’t the exact sentiments he wanted to express, or if he had a better thought the moment he finished writing it, it was done. He’d committed ink to the page, and he wasn’t about to rewrite it, so all he could do was blow on it gently until it dried, and then fold it over in quarters. He had an envelope ready, and he slipped the note in and sealed it with a dribble of wax. He didn’t have a seal, so he waited until the wax was slightly cooled and then he pressed his finger to it. It wasn’t necessary — it would have sealed just fine left alone — but the warmth of the wax made his fingertip pulse in a pleasant way.

He felt Ingrid and Felix's gazes burning hotter holes in the back of his head, anyway.

“Maybe I should write the next one,” Ingrid remarked tersely, clearly having read over his shoulder. Sylvain shook his head.

“No, only one of us can write letters,” he said. Discussion over. He held the letter up to the light to check that the paper was folded thick enough that it couldn’t be read. Not that that mattered either — if someone was close enough to glimpse it, they would already have possession of it, anyway.

“I was thinking we should split the risk,” Felix said. “I’m already the most vocal amongst the three of us, and I have the strongest support from my family. I could bear the risk better than either of you.”

Perhaps he meant that to sound comforting, or generous, but what was Sylvain supposed to do with that? Let the one with the most left to lose take the biggest risk?

“No,” Sylvain said bluntly. “This was my idea. I write the letters, I take the fall.”

Felix hummed his disagreement, a low rumble at the base of his throat, but he didn’t argue. He could feel Ingrid and Felix sharing a look, somewhere behind his head; both of them had been very critical of his taking a leadership role, but they didn’t really have any arguments against it.

He had the least to lose, the biggest personal interest in seeing the nobility dismantled, and the greatest hope that they could still save Dimitri, or at least protect him long enough for Edelgard to remove Rhea from power. He’d also been the first to defect, and the first to say they should try to save Dimitri.

He also desperately wanted to protect the two of them. If anyone was going to be executed, it was him.

Sylvain just wished he’d thought about it a little more before volunteering — he’d really thought it would be as easy as catching up with Dimitri at Garreg Mach and convincing him, probably over dinner or something, that the church needed to go. If he’d known he would be brought back to Fhirdiad in chains and watched it all go to shit from imprisonment, he might have just stayed in the Empire.

It could have been better, he thought, to have met Dimitri on the battlefield. He could see it play out in his head — the positioning of his feet, his choice in approach, the strain of his muscle. He’d known Dimitri so long that he didn't remember _meeting _Dimitri. He knew every single move Dimitri might make, and brute strength be damned, Sylvain knew they could go toe-to-toe if they needed to. Sylvain openly fantasized about it on a near daily basis: putting his knee into Dimitri’s gut, bludgeoning him over the head with the butt of his axe, and then hauling his unconscious body back to Enbarr for a reckoning.

He kept that plan tucked in his back pocket. He might need it someday.

“I better go get dressed,” Ingrid said, quietly. “Mercedes wants to put some make-up on me, and she’ll wonder if I don’t show up soon.”

“Sure,” Sylvain said. He reached for her and gave her hand a quick squeeze. Ingrid smiled tightly, and he smiled tightly back at her. He let her go and she left, a hand wandering across Felix’s shoulders as she went. Felix just nodded.

When the door closed behind her, neither of them spoke for a moment. Sylvain looked down at his writing desk and pondered if he should write a will or something. He was sure neither his father nor the church would honour it, but today he felt like he should prepare for it. Just in case.

Things were about to get a lot uglier soon. Very soon.

“Are you getting dressed up?” Sylvain asked. Sylvain had already changed into a wool tunic with tedious embroidery and a large fur cloak, an old ceremonial one that was just a shade too small for him — even if he'd wanted to commission something new, and his father had been stingy with his allowance lately. He supposed the last thing he had left to do was affix his lapel pin to his cloak. Even if nothing came of it, he’d look very loyal.

Felix was quiet. Sylvain craned his neck to look at him, and Felix sighed.

“I suppose I should,” Felix relented.

“I'm surprised you're coming at all, the way you were talking last night.”

“I’d rather see what happens at the coronation with my own eyes,” Felix said. “Even if it makes me sick. Besides, anything could happen. I want to be there, just in case.”

“Fair enough,” Sylvain said, and he stood up. Felix was watching him carefully, and Sylvain forced an even tighter smile upon scrutiny. “I’m going to go and find Dimitri. See if I can talk to him one last time before this goes down.”

“That didn’t go very well two days ago.”

“I still have to try.”

Felix nodded.

“Good luck,” he said, but there was the slightest touch of cynicism there, one that made Sylvain’s throat feel tight. Felix didn’t follow up with anything else to soften the blow — he just let it hang.

Sylvain just left. He always had to try.

He found Dimitri where he tended to find Dimitri these days. From the doorway of the chapel he could see Dimitri standing at the altar, hands hanging limp at his sides, face turned to the vaulted ceilings. He was dressed in the full regalia of a soon-to-be-crowned king, and the cloak alone was so laden in beaded embroidery and braiding that it must have weighed forty pounds. He stood very, very still. Sylvain wondered if he was even breathing.

“How is he?” Sylvain asked Dedue, who stood silently by the door. Dedue glanced down the aisle at Dimitri, and then fixed his stern green eyes on Sylvain.

“Apprehensive,” Dedue said. “But he is ready to go through with this.”

“Good,” Sylvain said, smiling, even though he felt it was the exact opposite of good.

"Hmm."

Sylvain wanted to clutch Dedue by the lapels of his coat and shake him until he came to some sense, _some_ self-preservation. Even the barest desire to do what was best for Dimitri would do, regardless of whether it was what Dimitri wanted, could change everything, but Dedue was loyal to a fault. Dedue would turn on them the moment they violated the fragile trust they had rebuilt over the past months. Sylvain harboured a deep-seated hope that it wouldn’t come to that, but he had already begun the process of disconnecting. They couldn't keep up this charade forever. Six months from now, they would either be back with Edelgard, or they’d be dead.

"I'm going to talk to him," Sylvain said.

“He hasn’t spoken to anyone all morning."

“I might as well try my luck, then,” Sylvain said.

He walked down the aisle towards Dimitri. Along the way he spotted Marianne crouched in the pews, her head bowed and her hands clasped in fervent prayer. Sylvain carried on and stopped at the hem of Dimitri’s cloak. This close, he could see beads of nervous sweat on the back of Dimitri’s neck. As usual, he had tried to comb his hair back into careful order, but the front was already falling forward into his face.

“Hey, Your Highness,” Sylvain said. “I guess it’s too early in the day for a _Your Majesty_, huh?”

Dimitri turned as though startled.

“Sylvain,” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

He glanced behind them to see if anyone else was around, and then he settled somewhat. Sylvain looked back, too, but it didn't seem that Dimitri even noticed Marianne, or Dedue. His gaze settled somewhere else. Somewhere distant. Sylvain swallowed his breath. The Dimitri he stood with felt alien to him, at least in part, and each day, he felt a little more divorced from the little boy Sylvain had grown up around.

Sylvain didn’t know whether the friend he stood with was a boy in a man’s suit, or a man rapidly shedding the last vestiges of boyhood. Dimitri was changing. Warping, even. Those who would reforge him into a king had heated him to his core and then set him aside too carelessly.

What Sylvain did know is that Dimitri needed help.

“It’s really come to it, huh?” Sylvain said. “We’re doing this. You’ll be King, and Faerghus will go to war.”

“Yes. The archbishop and I have come to an agreement,” Dimitri said, and he turned his eyes back to the altar and _smiled_ at it the way a poor man could gaze upon a feast and riches. “The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus will back the Church of Seiros in war and destroy the Empire. In exchange, she has given me the sole right to sever Edelgard’s head from her traitorous neck.”

Sylvain was glad for a lifetime’s worth of practice smiling through disagreements, but the stakes had never felt so high. Trading an entire kingdom’s worth of soldiers for one woman’s head was ludicrous, but it had nothing on the casualness of that statement: _here’s my entire kingdom, now I’ll bathe in this woman’s blood!_

Dimitri shivered suddenly, a whole-body tremble, and he chuckled softly. That made the fine hair on Sylvain’s arms stand on end.

“To think we delayed this moment for months,” Dimitri said. “We traded that time for your neck, and Felix’s, and Ingrid’s...”

Sylvain nodded. Dimitri looked at him and let out an amused huff.

“Three necks for one,” he said. There was something rueful about it.

“You’re a good friend,” Sylvain said, but he felt a curl of fear in his belly. He wondered how much longer Dimitri really would have held out for the sake of his neck, especially after spending the school year in a long, quiet dispute. “I hope you know, Dimitri… we're all looking out for you here. Ingrid, Felix, me. And you've got Dedue, and Mercedes, and Ashe, and Marianne. I hope you'll lean on us."

Dimitri laughed. It was sharp and ugly. He uttered: “I do not need people to lean on, I need people who will rise to the war she's laid out at our feet! I must kill her. I'll kill her for everything she's done to me, to my family — to the Kingdom!"

Sylvain pushed out a laugh. It felt hollow, but he was sure that Dimitri didn't even notice. He wasn't sure that Dimitri was even talking to him, at least not in spirit.

"Yeah, I get that," he said. "But she's… she's going to be a tough enemy. She's relentless."

"You would know best, wouldn't you?" Dimitri said. "You've spent so much time with her in the past year. Tell me — do you regret it now?"

"Of course," Sylvain replied. He wasn't sure whether he was voicing something he'd pushed down or if he was lying through his teeth. "Crazy to think she was trying to use me. Always fishing for my attention, sizing me up… and she has this weird thing about crests… Women, right?"

"She wanted to turn you against me."

Sylvain shook his head.

"I just wanted to sleep with her."

Dimitri laughed. It wasn't funny. Guilt took hold of Sylvain's guts and squeezed, but it slipped out much easier than his own laughter. Edelgard was endeavoring to put the reins of history back in humanity's hands, and she had spent a lot of time arranging all of her plans to make it as swift and as clean as possible. But even the best laid plans could be set awry; Sylvain didn't imagine she had planned for Dimitri to react like this. His mission was barely a stopgap, just a means of slowing down the march of war, pacifying Dimitri, limiting the damage done—

Sylvain had no idea how he was going to do any of that. His one and only weapon was that he knew, in his heart, that he cared for Dimitri, and that those cares went much deeper than those of men who would drive him to war for some ignorant, superficial gain.

Sylvain's laughter died. Dimitri's had long since faded. For a moment the two of them stood in silence.

Sylvain had known Dimitri his entire life. Throughout that life he had deferred to Dimitri with a healthy balance of respect owed to his future king, love for a boy who was like a brother to him, and…

Fear, he supposed.

Not of Dimitri, he told himself, but what any man could be when enough had been taken from him to compromise his heart. He'd seen it in other men before, too.

Sylvain thought of Felix's doubt. Part of him knew Felix was afraid of losing Dimitri more than they already had, and that it would be easier to distance himself now than it would be to place his trust in Dimitri's ability to come around. In their ability to support Dimitri, and give him reason to come around. It didn't make sense to Sylvain. Everyone _said_ things. He said things all the time. It didn't mean it was the objective truth, or even a reflection of how he really felt. Didn't the same apply to Dimitri? How could he really want to be this person?

"I'm glad you understand," Dimitri said, slowly, turning back to the altar. "Tonight, I will be king, and I will declare war on the Adrestian Empire."

Sylvain nodded.

"I'll be at your side," he promised. "I'll protect you."

There was a poem — more of a chant, really — that the knights of old would speak to grant their lords an oath of fidelity. Those oaths were the most powerful thing in Fódlan, stronger than any bond or contract, and they were the kind of words taught to noble children in preparation for the day that they would swear themselves to their king and country. In poetry, it became more than mere rote memorization; it became sacred, something that could bring a room to silence when invoked.

Sylvain had never seen a coronation but he knew he was about to witness one of those moments. He could feel on the air. The people gathered for the coronation were all of that sort, older men and women who had seen war and lived to speak of its dignity, and younger knights who had seen war in Duscur and Sreng and still believed in the romance of it. Those jaded by war were not invited. Sylvain was certain that Felix would have been off the list if he wasn't in lockstep to one day carry on his father's legacy and serve the king directly.

In a way, this was Felix's coronation as much as Dimitri's. By coming back to Fhirdiad he was playing along with his part in that, and his desire to abdicate his title just months ago seemed a lifetime away. It was like watching a line of horses fall on the battlefield. It was hard to look away. Sylvain did not feel the same. Sylvain felt detached, tethered only to his friends in this miserable society.

If he had taken part in Dimitri's military campaign against the rebellion in the west some years ago, he might have felt that way. He hadn't gone, though. Miklan had seen to that, laying him up in bed with a concussion and two dislocated thumbs — those thumbs being the sort of thing that really could keep a soldier off the battlefield. Sylvain wasn't thankful for it, but then again, sometimes he was.

Dimitri had been changed there. So had Felix.

Would he have changed?

"This was supposed to be so happy," Ingrid said. "To become king, only to immediately go to war…"

"I know," Sylvain murmured. He looked around the crowd. The people were gathered in an arc around the throne, and the three of them stood on the end of it, where they were adjacent to the throne instead of before it.

Dimitri stood in the middle, quietly waiting. Sylvain tried to catch his eye but Dimitri seemed completely lost in thought. Maybe he was trying to recall the oath. That seemed like a very Dimitri thing, didn't it? Some abject fear of not being adequately prepared would surface in him, and he would grow flustered, and forget his words. Maybe it would frustrate him. Maybe he would rein it in, with the pressure from so many onlookers.

A hush fell upon the crowd suddenly, snuffing out the mild chatter. Rhea had appeared from behind the curtain that fell behind the throne, and all eyes turned to her. Sylvain found himself unable to look away. He had not stood so close to her since he had refused to return the Lance of Ruin to her, not even at trial. She was radiant, so much so that Sylvain felt that he would still be seeing her even if he looked away. She stood on the raised stage, one hand on the back of the throne as if she possessed it. Her dress was pristine white — impossibly clean, particularly so in a city that had languished as Faerghus had.

Sylvain had the vivid and irrepressible image of Edelgard staining it all red.

He steeled himself.

"Prince Dimitri," the Archbishop said, so relaxed she may as well have breathed it upon them all. "Are you prepared to be anointed?"

Dimitri dropped to a knee. The Archbishop smiled. Seteth stepped out to stand at her side — he was the only suffragan in this particular ceremony, the rest of the pomp and tradition stripped away for the sake of expediency. For the sake of anointing Dimitri king and getting on with the business of setting Faerghus upon Adrestia, for the Church's personal dogfight. Seteth held an ampoule laid with gold chains and white and green enamel in one hand, and the Sword of Seiros in the other. Rhea glanced at them and then descended the stairs to Dimitri, who bowed his head.

"When I anointed your father, you were nothing but a dream in your mother's head," Rhea said. "If he were here today, he would be proud of you, child. You have borne great burdens despite your tender age."

Sylvain watched Dimitri's head bow deeper. A tremble ran through his shoulders. Sylvain grit his teeth.

"I am prepared to rule," Dimitri replied, voice growing stronger towards the end.

Rhea smiled beatifically. She blinked slow and relaxed, and Dimitri raised his face to her. His blue eyes were wet with tears, and he lowered them from hers almost immediately.

"Will you to your power cause law and justice to be executed in all your judgements?" she asked.

"I will," Dimitri replied.

"And will you, young Dimitri, maintain the Will of the Goddess?" Rhea asked. "Will you maintain and preserve inviobly the Church of Seiros, and as by law uphold their rights and privileges, and all that pertains to them?"

Sylvain swallowed this breath. He looked around. No one seemed to bat an eye.

"I swear it," Dimitri said, and then his breath hitched. Sylvain winced, and then Dimitri barrelled on:

"I, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, new King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, son of King Lambert, by my free will admit to _you_, Archbishop Rhea, by the grace of the Goddess Sothis...”

Dimitri hesitated there. It was not out of any fear or reluctance to speak, however; it was because he was choking up. A tear rolled down his cheek. Sylvain felt his chest grow tight. He wished he was on the other side of the crowd so he didn't have to see Dimitri's face, exalted at the feet of the woman who would enable his most primal, vengeful desires.

"By my true faith, without deceit, as a man should be towards his spiritual leader, to who he has commended himself by his hands.”

Dimitri clasped his hands over Rhea's, and he bowed so low that his forehead touched where their hands met. The archbishop gazed down at him, though she scarcely dipped her head. It made her look frightening, wholly detached from the young man at her feet.

"From this moment forward, I will not treacherously deprive you of your life, nor will any man or women do so by my counsel or consent, nor will I deprive you of your lands or the castle of Fhirdiad or of any fortification under the Church of Seiros' domain," Dimitri spoke.

(Sylvain felt Felix breathe out a long, dangerous sigh.)

“If any man or woman takes these from you or wants to take these from you, I will come to your aid without deceit, whenever you order me to do,” he continued. “I will neither associate nor make peace with that man or woman until I have recovered what they have taken from you, and returned it to you without payment on your part, or without deceiving you. What I have said to you is...”

He stumbled. He was shivering. Maybe he was afraid. Sylvain felt his stomach turn.

“I will hold and observe this, with the Goddess and her teachings as my helpers. Long... _long live the Archbishop!_ May I slay your foes! May I crush the Empire!”

Rhea was quiet for a moment, her peaceful expression and serene smile seemingly unmoved. Then, carefully, she laid a hand on Dimitri’s head, and he shook at her touch, trembling as he held back tears. She looked back to Seteth, who descended the stairs after her and brought her the Sword of Seiros. Rhea took it and touched it to Dimitri's shoulders as he soundlessly wept.

Sylvain had to look away. He thought he might be sick. He tore his gaze from the sight and landed on Felix. Felix was watching without blinking, but there was an unmistakable disgust on his expression that surely all of court would see if they weren't so riveted by the sight of Dimitri prostrate before the Archbishop. Sylvain _felt_ Felix reach for the hilt of his sword, slow enough not to draw attention, and Sylvain darted a hand out to seize upon Felix's wrist.

Felix looked to him and Sylvain gave him a terrible look of warning.

Felix narrowed his eyes and then he shifted as if to draw anyway. Sylvain held fast. Their eyes remained locked, briefly, and Sylvain gave him a furrowed brow and a more desperate warning look.

“You can’t,” Sylvain murmured, low and careful. Ingrid had noticed their conflict, and so anyone else in their vicinity could. Sylvain leant in closer to Felix but he turned his eyes on the crowd. “It won't work."

“Then what would you have me do?” Felix muttered. “I can’t bear this—“

“You have to,” Sylvain replied, firmly. He saw Gilbert looking at them, his brow furrowed.Sylvain leaned in closer to Felix, mouth nearly against his cheek, and he smiled as though he were overcome with joy for this wonderful, wonderful moment where Dimiti was now king and about to plunge them all into war, _hooray!_ Felix hunched a shoulder but Sylvain just lingered. His own voice scared him. "It's just us. There's only us. If you miss, if you fail, then what happens to everyone?"

Sylvain_ felt _Felix's pulse throb in his wrist, even as his hand slackened on the hilt of his sword.

"You've accepted your duty," Rhea declared.

She handed the sword back to Seteth, who gave her the ampoule in turn. Rhea took a moment with it, drawing it to her lips to kiss it and hold it to her face sentimentally, and then she removed its cap. She lowered it to the crown of Dimitri's head and tipped it.

"I anoint you," she said, with the love and fondness of a new mother, "my Holy King of Faerghus… the saviour who will save the church from tyranny and rebellion."

Dimitri closed his eyes and nodded, seemingly overcome. A dribble of oil slipped through his hair and down his forehead, rolling along the inside edge of his nose. He breathed deeply. Sylvain felt Felix do the same.

What a terrible thing it was, to be king.

There was, of course, a ball afterwards.

Sylvain had never missed a ball when he could help it, but for the first time, he wanted nothing more than to walk out. He would have loved to enjoy it, but it simply wasn't possible. It didn't feel right.

At the very least, he was not going to stay by Dimitri's side the entire time. Dedue was there, and Sylvain felt relieved for his calm and steady presence. Dedue's investment in Dimitri served a function that Sylvain knew he could not provide: stability. Dedue would train with him. Dedue would keep him fed. Dedue would help Dimitri through the daily routine of putting on his mask and playing his part. Dedue was that kind of friend.

Sylvain was not a friend who could defend like Ingrid did, he was not a friend who could tell the truth like Felix did, and he was not a friend who could be a steadfast, predictable rock like Dedue could.

Sylvain knew he was the friend who was carefully making sure everything was okay. That everything wrapped up as tidily as it could, whether he got the credit or not. Things wouldn't be perfect, of course, but he would try his best.

What mattered was that everyone lived, and that was why he stayed at the ball. He was on the lookout for the Empire spy who would carry his letter back to Edelgard, and hopefully that spy would have another letter for him. Something with news. Something with hope.

Between dancing with girls and carousing with the guys, he nipped out to the balcony, hoping to give the spy an opportunity to find him alone.

"Sylvain?"

Sylvain turned and looked to find Mercedes peeking her head out of the balcony door. Her smile was lovely, and though Sylvain missed her beautiful long hair, she still looked very cute with her hair cut to her jaw.

"You couldn't get enough of that dance, huh?" he teased.

"You didn't last very long," she said. There was the slightest touch of amusement on her voice. "I just saw you'd slipped off again and wanted to be sure everything was alright."

Sylvain was worried that he did not seem happy enough, but then again, Mercedes had a much stronger nose for people's moods than virtually anyone else he had ever met. Still, he smiled wider, leaning back against the balcony.

"I'm fine, sunshine," he said.

That made her smile dip into something a little more wry. She came out into the cooler air, closing the door behind her, and she joined him by the railing. She cast the shadows a cursory look. Save for a couple knights standing a long ways up the balcony, they were alone.

"I worried you were seducing some girl out here," she said.

"It's not too late for that," he said, reaching to thumb at her hip, but he didn't quite touch her.

She laughed.

"You're funny," she said, and as lightly as it slipped off her lips, Sylvain knew that was as far as he was getting with her. She leant against the railing too, folding her arms across it and then gazing down at the city.

They were both silent for a moment. Sylvain wondered what she wanted to talk about. He was worried about saying anything at all. While his whole life had been a stream of carefully curated information, designed to keep people comfortable at any cost, here he felt guilt. He felt like he was preparing for her blood to be on his hands, and that warranted a particular attention.

"Things are going to be really different now," she said, finally.

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "I think he's going to have the royal army mustered by morning."

"Mm," Mercedes hummed. "He's dancing with Ingrid right now, but I can tell the war's the only thing on his mind. It's a little sad. This should have been a happy occasion."

"I know," Sylvain said. He paused. He worried the house ring on his finger. "I guess war was pretty inevitable. You heard what Edelgard — the Emperor —said in that transcript that arrived today, right?"

"I heard some," Mercedes replied.

"She's really serious that she's declaring war on the Church, not on Faerghus or the Alliance," Sylvain said. "And the Alliance is avoiding war for now by declining to take a side. I can't help but think that a lot of people wouldn't be facing their deaths if Dimitri did the same."

"And abandon the church in their time of need?" Mercedes asked, very cautiously.

Sylvain had anticipated that, but he wasn't sure what else to say about it. He looked at her and smiled, keeping his voice light.

"It's not an easy decision," he agreed. "But the people are so vulnerable. Ever since Lambert died, Faerghus has been on a decline, and now our people are going into war for the sake of a cause they aren't even sure about. Almost half of the lords seem likely to side with the Empire…"

He knew why, too. Edelgard's cause wasn't unfounded. While people loved and believed in the Goddess, the church was just one language for speaking of her, and Faerghus had developed a complicated relationship with the church. Rebellions and uprisings had been a staple of the last handful of years; even without reports from his father, Sylvain had seen it himself when they had supported the Knights of Seiros in quashing the Western church.

In Sylvain's mind, there was plenty of reason for Faerghus to crumble even without Edelgard waging war on them, and new rebellions would splinter off in favour of the Empire. He welcomed it; despite his love for Faerghus, the fewer lords there were nursing Dimitri's hatred of Edelgard by encouraging war, the easier time he would have extracting Dimitri from it all. It would be painful but temporary. He was sure Edelgard would restore Faerghus in the end.

Mercedes pursed her lips.

"I confess I had the same thought," she said. "But… I think it's right to protect the church. And with Dimitri as king, I think we can keep Faerghus united."

Sylvain smiled.

"I sure hope so," he said.

Something caught his eye up the balcony. One of the knights was watching them. Though Sylvain felt a curl of fear, he hoped it was just Edelgard's spy waiting for a moment to catch him alone to take the letter. That letter was like fire in his pocket. Sylvain ignored him, turning his attention back to Mercedes.

"Hey," he said, reaching to tuck her hair behind her ear. "Tonight is supposed to be happy. Don't let me keep you out here in this depressing conversation… go in and take Ashe or Dedue for a whirl, huh?"

Mercedes shook her head, a small smile on her lips, and she reached to take his hand.

"Why don't you come in and dance with me, Sylvain? I won't leave you out here to mope."

"Nah, it's so hot in there," Sylvain said. "All those bodies, all that tension… I think I'd like to stay out here for at least a few more minutes. But you go. I'll be right behind you."

Mercedes sighed.

"Alright," she said. "But if you're not inside again soon, I'll come out and drag you in!"

He was sure she would grab him by the ear and do just that, but he would deal with that later. Mercedes left, and as soon as the door settled back into the frame, Sylvain turned his eyes out to the view from the balcony. A crowd roared dully below, torches lighting up a sea of people. Sylvain exhaled slowly and he shrugged out of his fur cloak, feeling much too warm.

He heard the knight coming up behind him; he knew it was the knight solely for the familiar clank of his sabatons on the stone. Sylvain let him linger for a moment, wondering if he would reach out to tap his shoulder, or call out to him, or _something_.

If he kept his back turned, he could imagine it was Edelgard there, fishing for his attention. Seemed fair, considering how much he wanted hers.

He just wanted someone to tell him what to do.

He just wanted someone to tell him it was going to be okay.


	26. Gravestones

** **

“Today is my last day here,” Felix said. “The wall will be finished tonight, so I’m leaving at dawn tomorrow morning.”

Sylvain had a bite of his porridge halfway to his mouth when Felix dropped that little bomb on them, and as a result, dropped the spoonful. It landed on the table with a splat, and Sylvain grimaced and flicked it to the floor so he wouldn’t accidentally drag his sleeve cuff through it. It also bought him time to think of a reply that wouldn't drip with personal strife, which Ingrid gave in his stead:

“I really wish we could change your mind,” she said.

“I know you're disappointed,” Felix said, in a tone that suggested they had been making demands of him for far too long already. “I wasn’t planning to be away this long to begin with, and if I leave now, I can still get Remire ready for winter before the snows get too deep.”

“No way it isn't already snowing there,” Sylvain said. "And if you get held up on the road and get back even later, then what?"

Felix sighed. He’d explained it a number of times already, but Sylvain hoped that if he kept coming back to it, eventually Felix would realize how stupid it sounded andwould cave in and stay with them. Sylvain felt he knew the real reason anyway, ever since he overheard that conversation: Felix just didn’t want to deal with him anymore.

“I’m not going over it again,” Felix said. “I promised I’d come visit in the spring, and I meant it. Just stay here and look forward to that, if you must.”

“I’m happy to have you whenever you’d like to visit, Felix,” Ingrid said.

Sylvain pushed his porridge around in his bowl. His spoon scraped the stone bowl loudly, and Sylvain knew it annoyed both of them but he made no effort to stop. When they both seemed ready to kick him under the table, Sylvain set his spoon down much harder than necessary, and he leant against the edge of the table, his eyes set firm on Felix.

“I’m only letting you leave on one condition,” he said.

Felix gave him a deadpan look. Sylvain had no ability to enforce anything, and Felix surely knew that, but it was funny to see him get tetchy over the very idea. Sylvain raised his eyebrows playfully, which he regretted because those kinds of facial theatrics tugged at the scab on his head wound.

“If this is your last day here, we have to spend it together,” Sylvain ordered. “And it's Ingrid's birthday soon, so we can celebrate it. The three of us. Like old times.”

Ingrid pursed her lips. Felix did not look particularly convinced either, but he seemed to sense what the path of least resistance was.

“Alright,” Felix agreed. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s go on a hack,” Sylvain said. “We’ll go out and ride in the countryside for a bit and get dinner at some quaint little inn, and then we can come back here and have tea and play cards into the night.”

“I’m about to spend a week traveling back to Remire, where I live off the land every day, and you think my idea of fun is being in the saddle, out in the snow?” Felix replied, skeptically.

“It’s different when it’s for fun,” Sylvain said. “We could go hunting, actually. When was the last time you went hunting?”

“Again, every day,” Felix said, “because I live in the wilderness.”

“Hunting for fun,” Sylvain said. “Not gamey little hares. The stag, Felix. The stag.”

He wasn’t even sure if there were still stags to hunt, but he sure liked the idea. Once upon a time, that had been the privilege of the king and his retinue, and Sylvain and his friends had spent countless days tagging along in their fathers’ hunting parties. Sylvain had never cared much for the hunt itself, but Felix and Ingrid were competitive enough to make it entertaining, and Dimitri laughed brightly all the time. Spending time with them was all he could have asked for. But back then, going on the hunt had been a privilege; it was a punishable offence to slaughter the king’s wild game without his permission. Without a king, were the people now free to hunt as they pleased?

“Come on, Felix,” he cajoled. “You never get to hunt stag back in Remire. What’s one guy going to do with all that meat?”

Felix opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out but an exasperated sound.

“Let’s go to the edge of the Tailtean battlefield,” Ingrid suggested.

The two men fell quiet for a moment.

“I don’t think that place is really what I had in mind for fun,” Sylvain said, finally.

“The snow isn’t too hard on the horses and the deer go there for the water and the rocks. You wanted to go riding and hunting, there you have it,” Ingrid said. She pushed her bowl away and fixed them both with a look that Sylvain hadn’t seen since his own mother died.“And I think you should pay your respects to our friends.”

There was an even more sobering thought, but Sylvain didn’t disagree. It was only right to pay his respects to them, Dimitri included. He looked at Felix, whose expression was unreadable for a moment.

“Fine,” Felix agreed.

That was it, then.

“Alright,” Ingrid said. “I’ll rearrange my schedule to take today off instead of my actual birthday. Both of you can meet me in the stables in about an hour.”

She got up and gathered her dishes, and then she left.

For a moment, Felix and Sylvain were quiet, and then Felix gave him a pointed look. When Sylvain could fathom no response to such a vague look, Felix nudged him under the table with his foot. The toe of Felix's boot trapped Sylvain's. The weight intrigued him, and finally, Felix asked:

“Just how do you expect to hunt on that old nag?”

Felix gave the barest of smiles, and Sylvain let out a scoff of a laugh.

Good point.

Truth be told, Sylvain felt a little guilty that he had an ulterior motive to taking them out together.

Seeing them both outside of the walls of Fhirdiad was all fine, of course. If it had been just that, he would have been content, too. But if it was Felix's last day with them, Sylvain knew he only had one more chance to push Ingrid into talking to him with a buffer present. And, he thought, if it _really_ went really tits up and she wanted him to leave, he could potentially make a swift, painless exit with Felix, and tell Edelgard that it was beyond his control.

Without Felix, he wasn't sure if he'd have the guts to stick around and try.

Unfortunately, it appeared the wild game knew he was improvising a plan. Sylvain discovered that even if Horse had been a nice courser with a plucky gait and good footing, there wasn’t much _left_ to hunt.

With the lords having fled or been stripped of their power, game was open season to any man who could afford a bow or a net, and it seemed hunters had made a good profession out of trapping, slinging and shooting game and bringing it into the city. Meat had always been a food of the rich in Faerghus, as a livestock could produce milk and cheese and eggs and wool and offspring that placed their value far above some servings of meat, and now the wild creatures were theirs to devour. Forget finding a stag — there was not a hare or wildfowl to be seen, let alone deer, and they passed plenty of hunting parties out looking, and many of them looked shabby enough that Sylvain felt an immediate drop in any desire to hunt for sport.

Sylvain missed his fun, but he did not want to be seen partaking in it, nor did he like the realization that it was abnormal for people to have rights to the land they and their families had lived on for centuries. It was ludicrous, to him, to think of how many people had starved over his lifetime alone because some lord refused hunting or fishing rights to the poor who lived under them.

He thought, for a fleeting moment, that his absence in Gautier might have done some real evil. Though he did not like to think about what was going on in Gautier, someone else might have taken his seat, and they could be greedy rather than just ignorant. No man should claim to own Fódlan’s wild creatures while the poor starved.

_ No, no, _he told himself. _Don't think about Gautier. Move forward. Move forward._

But there weren't a lot of distractions, on this little trip, and despite Ingrid up ahead of him and Felix just behind, Sylvain felt like he was wandering the fields with little more to do but think about how terrible the world was. Ingrid did not seem interested in conversation, and Felix seemed to be busy steeling himself for his journey back to Remire.

They were supposed to be having fun for once, and if Ingrid wasn't having a good time, then she'd be even more reluctant to talk to him. Nothing was ever going to get accomplished until got her to open up a little — just a little. Sylvain mulled an alternative idea over in his mind, glancing between her and Felix. He thought he could pull it off.

He studied Ingrid and her pegasus. Her pegasus was content to walk like a normal horse in the crowded city, but in the open fields heading towards Tailtean proper, it moved impatiently, as though it itched to take off any moment.

“Ingrid,” Sylvain called.

“Yes?”

“Want to race?”

Ingrid slowed her pegasus to a halt so Sylvain could catch up.

“_You_ want to race? With _me_?” she asked, as though he had asked her if she wanted to sleep with him or something.

Sylvain supposed it was an odd question; he was always far more likely to want to play a board game or anything other than racing, because his long legs did very little for him when Ingrid and Felix could zip right by him. Men who weighed fifteen stones and regularly wore another half of that in armour were not put on earth to win races unless the goal was a short sprint that ended with putting a blade through someone’s belly at the other end. Besides:

He supposed the odder part of it was that he was asking despite having no chance to win. Not a single chance in hell.

“Yeah,” he said. “Here to the river. Felix?”

“Absolutely not,” Felix said.

That was fine. His competitive streak lay elsewhere, and Sylvain would get to him next. For now, Sylvain grinned, knowing Ingrid wouldn’t resist an opportunity to show him up, but she did not look convinced.

“You’re going to race me and my pegasus on that little rouncey?”

“If you’re afraid of losing, it’s alright,” Sylvain replied. “You can just decline.”

“One of you is going to to break your neck when the horses slip in the snow and throw you,” Felix interjected.

“It’s on,” Ingrid declared.

Sylvain grinned, and she turned away from him and gestured for him to join her and her pegasus at a good starting line. Felix sighed.

“Looks like you’re the starter,” Sylvain told Felix.

“I hope you both break your necks,” Felix grumbled. “Here. Take my horse, at least, I can’t stand to see you get massacred.”

Sylvain felt fiercely touched in that moment. He slid from the saddle without even stopping Horse properly, and the powdery top layer of the snow only came to his ankles. Fine for racing on, certainly. Sylvain went to Felix’s side and crowded him when he dismounted. Felix waved him off, but Sylvain persisted.

“You’re rooting for me,” Sylvain teased. “I’m touched!”

“Only because she’s insufferable when she wins,” Felix replied. A great fog came off his breath on the cool air, right in Sylvain’s face, and though Sylvain made no effort to lower his voice, he did reply, conspiratorially:

“She’s insufferable when she loses, too. Just watch.”

“Get on the horse, Sylvain,” Ingrid ordered.

Sylvain just grinned, clapping Felix on the shoulder and then mounting. Felix’s horse was still a little short for him, and built for endurance at that, but Sylvain had no doubt it would be faster than poor old Horse. He adjusted himself in the saddle and nudged Felix’s horse into position next to Ingrid and her steed.

“No wings,” Sylvain warned her. “Not that you would ever cheat, of course, given how noble and true you are.”

“You're picking a fight you won't win,” she replied, but she squared herself up in the saddle. Sylvain watched all the tension vanish from her face as she added: “No dirty tricks.”

“No dirty tricks,” he agreed.

Felix caught up with them, leaving Horse walking behind. He knew the drill, and he passed between them. Sylvain took a foot from the stirrup and gave Felix a little shove in the side when he passed, just hard enough to get his attention, which he was delighted to get.

“For good luck,” Sylvain said, holding out his hand, palm up. Felix looked at that hand suspiciously, but he offered his hand in turn. Felix just didn't get it. Sylvain sighed and took Felix by the wrist instead, and with his other hand, he pulled Felix’s glove off by the fingertips and stole it away. Felix protested, but it was too late. Sylvain tucked it in the front of his coat and then patted it fondly. “You can have this back at the end, when I win in your name.”

“Shut up,” Felix ordered, but Sylvain imagined his cheeks weren’t just pink from the cold. He jammed his bared hand in the pocket of his coat and tromped off ahead to a safe starting position. He did not check to see if they were ready, so when he raised his gloved hand to the sky, the two of them quickly adopted a racer’s pose.

Sylvain turned his eyes to the land ahead of them. The plains were a great expanse of white, with gentle hills shaded blue to match the sky, and the rivers inky dark stripes passing through. Felix’s horse did not seem ready for the race, but Sylvain was.

Felix dropped his arm fast. Sylvain kicked his heels in with a boisterous shout, and Ingrid did the same, though her pegasus shot off remarkably faster. Felix’s horse was slow to build speed, but it was surprisingly fast when its pace levelled out, and Sylvain felt himself buffeted by the wind. His hood fell back, and he let out a whoop as the ground sped by beneath him, the horses’ hooves kicking up a trail of powdery snow on the air behind them.

He dared glance at Ingrid. She was ahead by fifty feet, but he was steadily gaining on her. As he approached, he could see she was struggling to keep her pegasus on the ground; even as they ran, her mount kept bringing its wings up like a chicken, on the cusp of spreading them before Ingrid would dig her heels in. Sylvain laughed loudly as he gained ground, and Ingrid whipped her head aside, alarmed to see him so close.

“Having trouble?” he called.

He shouldn’t goad her, he knew that, because it spelled his doom: she doubled down on the reins and nudged her heels, and Ingrid and her pegasus began taking ground from him again, hoof over hoof. Sylvain chuckled to himself, blinking against the great clouds of snow she was still kicking up; it glittered on the air, and he was moving much too fast for it to even settle on him.

They were coming up on the river fast. Sylvain watched Ingrid meet it handily, letting her pegasus unfurl its wings at the last moment and take off just a foot or two off the ground for a victory lap across the river, and then back again on a hairpin turn. She met their side of the riverbank again as Sylvain pulled back on the reins to slow. Felix’s horse slowed about as fast as it sped up, and Sylvain had to pull back so tightly that when the horse did stop, it slid wildly and then bucked. A laugh died on his throat and he gripped the horn of the saddle, tightening his thighs. He barely held on, and then when Felix’s horse found all four feet again, the panic of the moment subsided just as fast as it came. Sylvain toppled out of the saddle anyway, the kind of fall he could just barely pass off as deliberate. He hit the ground on his back, unharmed and laughing.

Ingrid dismounted and came to him. Sylvain kept laughing, sprawled out in the snow, and he squinted up at her. Her head just barely missed blocking the winter sun from beaming down in his eyes. He raised a hand to shade his vision.

“Let’s hear it,” he said. “Go on, gloat.”

She was smiling, and she looked like she might have liked to rub her victory in his face, but something was wrong. The longer she looked at him, the more her smile faded, and then he was left laughing alone. _Ah,_ he thought. So close. She’d almost forgotten.

“It would mean more if you were on a better horse,” Ingrid told him, and she left him laying in the snow. She looked to the horizon, and Sylvain raised his head, just enough to see Felix and Horse in the distance, picking their way over at a plodding pace. From straight on, they scarcely looked like they were moving at all.

Sylvain looked back to Ingrid. Her braid had come loose in the wind. Her cheeks were pink, too, but her eyes were sad.

“Ingrid."

“Yes?”

“It’s nice to see you smile,” he said.

That wiped whatever was left of her smile clean away. She turned her back on him and returned to her pegasus to tend to the creature’s high spirits, and Sylvain just let her go. He felt snow on the back of his head, but he thought that his scalp would only be half as cold as Felix’s poor bared fingers, wound around the reins.

It was going to be a while before Felix caught up with them.

Sylvain sat up. Ingrid had her back to him.

“Ingrid,” he repeated. “Who do you celebrate your birthday with?”

Ingrid did not turn around. She did reply, though, a clipped: “No one, really. We're not little kids. No one really cares about birthdays now.”

“It doesn’t make you crazy? All duty, nothing else?”

“It’s my duty, Sylvain.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m just saying. You deserve to have more fun.”

She didn’t reply. Sylvain decided to take advantage of Felix’s relative inability to catch up with them on a nag like Horse, and just push Ingrid into the conversation she’d been avoiding with him since he’d arrived.

No, he told himself. He had to be honest. What was it she had said before, in that conversation he'd eavesdropped on? He didn't need to recall, because it was seared into his brain. He decided had to push _himself_ into the conversation _he'd_ been avoiding.

“Hey, uh… can I say something?” Sylvain asked.

“I told you,” she said. “I don’t want talk. All I've heard is talk. I want to see changes.”

“And I’m trying,” Sylvain said, as lightly as he could. “But we can talk, too, right? I’m not asking you to forgive me. I was just... well, I thought I should tell you that I’m not mad you ended our friendship, because _I _ended our friendship. What I said to you then, I didn’t mean it and I don’t believe it now.”

She glanced at him, but only briefly. She leant against her pegasus’s side and started fussing over it in that way that Sylvain knew she was just pretending to look too busy to pay much attention to him — she was braiding segments of the pegasus’s mane.

“You’ve always been an amazing friend to me, and put up with so much more than you ever should have had to,” he said. “And you spend so much time taking care of others that I’m_ glad_ you decided to take care of yourself when you left me, even if I was really graceless about it at the time.”

Graceless was an understatement. He had the vivid recollection of the way his heart had pounded as he spoke to her last. He hadn’t yelled, not like he later had with Edelgard. He’d just been cold and harsh and detached, and he’d threatened her because it had seemed like the only way of letting her know just how much he was hurting. He looked at her now, and though her expression was stony and closed to him, he could still remember what she’d looked like then.

He pushed the thought away and swallowed his breath.

“Anyway,” he said. “I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. I fucked up. It was me.”

She stopped fiddling with her pegasus’ mane. He sat up a little straighter when she started towards him, and she came to a stop standing over him. She gestured for him to get up. He looked up at her, almost a little dubiously; he wasn’t sure what she was going to do, and the look in her eye was a little frightening.

“Get up,” she ordered. Her bottom lip trembled a bit.

Sylvain did as he was told. He stood there, trousers wet where he’d been sitting, his coat dusted in snow. She looked up at him, unblinking, and she seemed to be figuring out what to say. Sylvain thought to offer to leave as soon as he’d accomplished the tasks that Edelgard had set out for him, but—

She stepped into his space and slapped him.

Sylvain staggered back a step, his cheek sparkling with pain, his jaw rattled. He looked at her, stunned, and she came back with a second swing. He shot out a hand and caught her wrist, and he hung on for dear life as she tried to wrench away. She shouted at him and swung back with her free hand, and he barely caught that too. Not to be deterred, she settled for ramming him with her body. She pushed him back a few steps; if she wasn’t a head shorter than him, she might have succeeded in toppling him over.

“Ingrid! Hey- _hey_!”

She put up a good fight, but then she slowly stopped struggling, and he slowly stopped trying to hold her back; after a long moment, she settled against his chest. He felt a great heaving sob wrack through her body, and he let go of her wrists and wrapped his arms around her. She thumped her fists off his chest and clung to the front of his coat intermittently, crying.

“You stupid idiot,” she gasped, over and over again.

“I know,” he said. He got a hand on the back of her head and smoothed down her hair. “I deserved that one. Sorry I didn’t let you get more in.”

“Shut up,” she said, muffled into his shoulder.

“Okay,” he agreed.

Sylvain sighed and buried his nose in Ingrid’s hair. His face now hurt almost as much as his head did, but neither had much on the guilt of having caused this, or the overwhelming relief that she’d at least given him an answer. Ingrid lingered with him for a moment, easing down until she was no longer even trying to thump him, and then she pushed him off. He let her go. She marched away from him and leant against Felix’s horse to catch her breath, and Sylvain just waited.

“_You_,” she said, brushing tears from her eyes, “are never allowed to put me through that again.”

Sylvain nodded. He wasn’t sure what _that_ was. There were a lot of things he had to take responsibility for, but she also could have meant the sum of their entire friendship. Whichever it was, he was sure she had a point. He swallowed his breath, not sure if he should say anything at all or just grovel. He truly did not want to grovel, but he felt there was no other voice.

“If you’re staying here,” she said, “if you plan to raise even a _single_ finger, _good._ I hope you realize just how much work has to be done. And if you lie to me, if you lie to me _ever_ again, or if you decide to walk out on your life _ever again_, you will be _dead_. You are going to _die_ and I can't handle that. Is that clear?”

“Crystal clear,” Sylvain said, soberly. He slowly approached her. He reached out a hand to her and she shook her head, so he withdrew once more. “I’m sorry. I promise—”

“Don’t,” Ingrid cut him off. “Don’t promise me anything.”

“Okay,” he said, reluctantly. She wasn’t wrong. Ingrid swallowed hard, looking deeply upset, and Sylvain tried again: “Ingrid, I’m sorry. Truly. I know an apology doesn’t mean anything, I need to work to make it up to you, but I think you need to hear it… so I apologize. For everything.”

"Tell me what you’re apologizing for," she demanded.

Sylvain hesitated. Where to even start?

"I'm sorry for messing up Gautier and leaving it in your hands," he said. It felt like sand in his mouth, and the next one did too: "I'm sorry for shirking my responsibilities. I'm sorry for punishing you for leading Hubert to me. I'm sorry for putting up a fight; you really were looking out what was best for me. I'm…" he trailed. Too many things came to mind at once, but it spilled out of him again. "I'm sorry for always making you responsible for me. I'm sorry for not reading your letters — if you even wrote them. Hell, Ingrid, I'm sorry for this not being the first thing out of my mouth when I got here. I'm… I'm just sorry."

Ingrid didn’t reply. She didn’t even meet his gaze. Sylvain wasn't sure if he should keep going.

“It’s going to take me a long time to really accept that,” Ingrid said, finally, and Sylvain barely bit back his sigh of relief that it was being accepted at all. “But I _am_ glad to hear it.”

He held a hand out to her. She looked at it dubiously, and then placed her hand in his. He gently pulled her towards him, ready to let her go if she needed to, but she sank into his arms and against his chest once more. She let out a long, sad sigh.

“I just want to scream at you sometimes,” Ingrid said.

Sylvain held her against him, burying his nose in her hair.

“Hey, you could always just kill me,” he said.

She didn't say anything to that. Sylvain could see Felix coming towards them out of the corner of his eye; he must have picked up the pace considerably at some point, likely having seen the dust-up going on. Horse was breathing heavily, her barrel belly shivering and her tail swishing wildly. Felix looked no less agitated, though perhaps in a more concerned way.

“I _knew_ you were up to something," Felix said, an accusation on his voice. “You hate competition!”

Sylvain shushed him, wrapping his arms a little tighter around Ingrid, but it was too late. Ingrid squirmed away just enough to peek up at him.

"Did you race me just to get me out in the middle of nowhere where I could snap at you?" Accusation weighed heavy on her voice, and Sylvain shrugged, but she just laughed bitterly, leaning her forehead back against his chest.

Felix sighed.

"Felix," Sylvain ordered, and he pulled an arm from Ingrid to beckon him to come. Felix did not budge. "Come here."

"I don't need to be in your hug."

Sylvain reached around Ingrid's head to fish Felix's glove out of his jacket, and he held it up like bait. Felix flexed his stiff fingers experimentally, as if weighing his preference for just letting them fall off in the cold, and finally he came over to get it. Sylvain scooped him into them; it tickled him that Felix could have easily ignored the bait or just resisted but _didn't_, so Sylvain mashed them all up together. Ingrid sighed, looping an arm around Felix, too. It was a warm way to huddle. Felix waited patiently to be released, but the more he leant away, the tighter Sylvain held him.

That moment couldn't last forever. Sylvain knew that. But he hoped, in some small, daring way, that he could hold onto it.

There were no hares to be had in the end, let alone stags, but they reached the edge of the Tailtean plains just as the sun reached its highest point in the sky. It had started to snow from the scarce few clouds that drifted overhead, and the snowflakes barely kissed his face before melting. Sylvain didn’t care. It could have been a blizzard and he still would have felt warm, comfortable in the presence of the two people he cared for most on this earth, and the last two people from his childhood who remained in his life. Things could get better with Ingrid. Felix wouldn't be going away forever. 

That was two more people in his life than he’d had just months ago.

Months ago, his entire world had been carefully narrowed to one insignificant little brothel, where he’d eaten meals crouched by the kitchen fire, cajoled the girls into slipping him drinks and openly nurtured a hatred of the nobility — and himself — that had secretly festered in him for his entire life. In the confines of that new life, where he was both himself and someone hiding from himself, Sylvain could never have imagined this moment.

He didn’t think he’d be moving forward at all, much less with friends, and yet… here he was.

Just the thought made him feel a joy that was as fierce as it was terrifying, but he didn’t let himself cry. He thought he might like to, given a little time to process, but in that afternoon, it was enough to have realized he wasn’t dead to Ingrid, and that Felix would always be somewhere in the world. It was enough to have them both, even if just for now.

It heartened him enough that he even felt strong enough to see their friends’ graves. He wasn’t invincible, of course, but with Ingrid and Felix at his side, that might be fine.

Many people had died on the plains that day; about half as many that had died in Fhirdiad. Most of the dead on the Tailtean plains were what was left of the Royal Army by that point in the war, after five long years of Rhea using the Kingdom’s army as cannon fodder to protect the Knights of Seiros and her personal guard. Few had survived to retreat to Fhirdiad, and those that were lucky enough to have the chance had only lived to see their capitol destroyed by the same woman who had made a home amongst them.

Sylvain felt unusually calm on Tailtean’s edge. He was surprised by his own lack of fear, but he supposed it was little different from being back in Fhirdiad. He knew the place was not the problem. While many bad things had happened on those grounds, Sylvain had only ever been hurt by people, and the land was the land, and cities were cities. Sometimes they were knocked down, sometimes they were flooded, sometimes they were stripped down by fire. They were what they were, and something or someone, _some_ force, would always ensure there was something for a future generation. There was nothing that time couldn't sweep away.

He knew it was the same with graves. Bodies returned to the earth, carried away in bits by water and worms and scavengers, the headstones eventually faded away too, especially with no keepers to maintain them. It was probably best that way. No one needed to be immortal, good or bad, and Sylvain thought it was comforting to know there would be a time where none of this would matter anymore, not to anyone.

But at the same time… in the coming years, who would remember Mercedes, Ashe and Dedue, if not them?

Sylvain gazed at the single stone marker that had been erected for not just Mercedes or Dedue, but for the thousands of soldiers who had died there. That was it. One stone. It seemed baffling to him.

"Is that it?" Sylvain asked.

“Come on,” Ingrid said, dismounting.

Sylvain followed. Felix did too, though he lagged behind. Sylvain paused and reached back for him, but he'd long exhausted Felix's trust in taking his hand today, so he let it drop again as Felix walked by him.

"There's some plan to build a memorial," Ingrid said, "but it's probably a long way off. There's no money for it, and no soldiers, and a lot of people would rather see the statues in the city restored first."

"Edelgard can't spare some gold to honour the dead?" Felix asked, dryly.

"Not when there are people living in hovels," Ingrid replied. She paused. "I don't know. I think it's a point of contention for her. She doesn't want memorials anywhere. In some way I don't blame her, but… I don't think all traditions are bad, and I think it would make some people feel comforted."

Sylvain mulled that over. Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn't. He still liked the idea of nothing being there.

He cast his gaze over the plains. While people had long since gone through the battlefield and collected human remains and anything of value, the telltale signs of a battle still peeked through the snow. Pieces of a great iron carapace that once belonged to demonic beasts were scattered, too heavy to be worth moving, and trees were broken from volleys of magic fire. Sylvain wondered what the ground looked like underneath. He thought he might come back to look in springtime, and see whether it held any other feeling for him.

"I wish we stayed behind," Sylvain said. "Instead of pressing on, we should have stayed around and buried them. Or… we should have brought them with us. Buried them with Dimitri and Ashe."

He knew why they hadn't. There hadn't been time, for one, even if any of them had been thinking straight. Sylvain looked up at the field. A report had confirmed Mercedes had been struck down by some of the Varley troops, caught under a volley of arrows. It was too far off for him to see with the naked eye, but Sylvain had a general idea of where. There had never been a report for Dedue; his body had not been recovered. Was it somewhere under the snow, buried in a mass grave? Had there been anything_ left _to recover?

"You know," Ingrid said. "I think about that all the time. It would be nice if they were all together, too. Less lonely."

"It wouldn't have made a difference whether they were buried here or there," Felix said. "They'd still be dead, and you'd be saying you wished you'd gone and fought for Fódlan's future instead of tarrying over the dead."

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "Well, that's just the way of it, isn't it? Regrets."

Felix said nothing to that. Neither did Ingrid. She folded her hands in prayer. Neither Sylvain nor Felix followed suite, but Ingrid didn't seem to care. The two men remained silent while she prayed, and when she raised her head, she turned to look at them. She breathed a heavy sigh and smiled tersely. There was a question on her mouth when her gaze lingered on Sylvain a moment too long, but she didn't ask it.

"Is that tavern on the road west still around?" Sylvain asked.

"The one with the stone ox?" Ingrid asked. "Or the other one?"

"Either one," Sylvain said. "I'm getting hungry. Maybe we should go get lunch. Talk some more inside over food."

More talking. Ingrid didn't look too thrilled about that, but she glanced at Felix, who shrugged, resigned.

"I could eat," he said.

"Me too," Ingrid agreed.

The tavern was perhaps the first place in Fhirdiad that Sylvain had seen that hadn't changed drastically. Sure, times were hard, but no matter how terrible things were, people still needed food and craved entertainment. Sylvain stabled the horses for them while Felix and Ingrid went inside to get them a table, and figuring they might be there for a few hours, he untacked and blanketed them. By time he got back inside, dusting snow off himself at the door, Ingrid and Felix were already talking over mugs of ale. Sylvain sat down with them and lifted his mug to his lips and found it thoroughly watered down. He felt eyes on him but he decided to say nothing.

"Took you long enough," Felix remarked. "We already ordered."

"Yeah? What'd you get me?"

"Bean soup," Felix said.

"Did it kill you to think about having to watch me eat beans, as you would be forced to imagine the texture?" Sylvain asked. He was touched, though he didn't know why — of course Felix knew what he liked. It wasn't exactly _hard._

"Oh, it did," Felix said, exasperated. "You're welcome."

"Thank you," Sylvain said. "And you're welcome for stabling your horse."

"You're faster than either of us anyway," Felix said. "You're a professional stableboy."

"How was that?" Ingrid asked.

Sylvain mulled it over for a moment. Bad, he decided. Not nearly as good as he'd pretended it was. But he also didn't want it to sound miserable, or like it was carefree. It wasn't.

"It was actually hard work," he said, finally. "Some places are better than others, but that might be the hardest I ever worked in my life."

"The _hardest?_" Ingrid replied. And, as if anyone needed a reminder: "We were at war."

“Yeah, hard. Stable work fucks you up,” Sylvain groaned. “Before the last place, I was just doing stable work for some rich guy who had forty horses, and it was just me and two other guys taking care of them all. Twelve hours a day, mucking stalls, exercising the horses, hauling feed... I swear, it’s such hard work, they should pay you twice over for when you’re thirty-five and too busted up to work anymore.”

Ingrid looked a little surprised.

“We all push our bodies, Sylvain.”

“Ingrid and I used to help clear rubble at Garreg Mach,” Felix said. The unspoken addendum there was _during the war, when you weren’t there,_ but Sylvain heard it loud and clear, drumming on his heart. “It was hard work, but it was fine. I think you’re just out of practice.”

“Neither of you get it,” Sylvain said, and he picked up his spoon and pointed it at them in turns. “That’s all they do. Day in, day out. Horses don’t have free days. Your entire life is shovelling shit until you can’t even get out of bed anymore.”

“Then why do it?”

“It was the only job I could find,” Sylvain said. “I don’t know any trades, I’m not an artist... I mean. It’s the same for both of you. Our parents didn't prepare us for real life. If you couldn’t do this anymore, Ingrid, what would you do?”

Ingrid mulled it over for a moment. Their silence was punctuated by a serving girl arriving with a tray laden with their food, and she placed them down one after the other. Sylvain immediately dug his spoon into it. It was hearty, and it was steaming so much that it warmed his face just to lean over it.

"I guess all I'd be good for is a stable," Ingrid said, finally. She sighed and then laughed. "No, I guess you're right. I don't think I could just settle down and be someone's wife, not anymore. I'd get bored as a clerk. I'd probably get bored doing just about anything else."

"See?" Sylvain said. He glanced at Felix. "Felix?"

"Literally nothing could stop me from being a swordsman," Felix replied.

"What if your arm got cut off?" Sylvain asked.

"I'd learn to use the other one."

Sylvain lifted a boot and pressed its sole on the top of Felix's foot, pointedly. If he had to squash some toes to bug Felix into not being obtuse, then he would. For a moment they stared each other down, Sylvain smiling just enough to say he wouldn't give in easy.

"How am I supposed to do anything when I'm missing an arm?" Felix demanded. "Theoretically."

"Okay, so you haven't lost an arm," Sylvain said. "You've just decided, for some reason, that you are done with your life of wandering and stabbing scoundrels, and you're going to do something else. Use your imagination for once."

He slipped his foot off Felix's and crossed their ankles instead. Felix looked down at his food and then back up at Sylvain, deadpan.

"Humour me," Sylvain implored. He smiled and ran his ankle up against Felix's calf. It was less fun in boots and winter gear than it might have been at school, but it was what it was.

"Okay," Felix said, a little annoyed, and he turned a knee out to fend Sylvain off, but Sylvain came right back. "I'd teach swordsmanship, or be steward to Edelgard's weapon collection."

"That's not fair," Ingrid said. "No swords at all, Felix."

"Fine," Felix relented. "I'd be a huntsman. And to stick with your rules, I'd just hunt game instead of beasts."

"Oh shit," Sylvain said. He wanted to make a joke but that was actually pretty good. He laughed and looked to Ingrid. "Why didn't either of us think of that?"

"That works," Ingrid agreed. "But then you'd have to spend more time around people, wouldn't you? A hunter is never too far from the people he sells furs to, or feeds…"

Felix shook his head.

"I'm not opposed to that," he said.

Sylvain felt Felix move under the table, and Sylvain shifted as subtly as he could to trap Felix's foot between his own. Felix glanced at him. Sylvain folded his arms against the edge of the table and leaned in.

"Say that again," Sylvain said. "Say you're not opposed to sticking around with people."

Felix didn't reply to that. He fixed his gaze on Sylvain, and with a firm tug, he pulled his foot from Sylvain's grip, bumping the underside of the table in the process. Ingrid frowned.

"But you gotta go," Sylvain said. "I get it. We'll see you in the spring, right?"

He thought maybe it would ease Felix a little to hear that. No arguments, no pushing, no demands, no nagging. Sylvain kept that smile frozen on his face. Felix shook his head, and to Sylvain's great relief, he finally _smiled._

"Yes," Felix agreed. "I'll be back in the spring. Maybe by then you'll have earned yourself a job mucking stables here!"

Ingrid smiled behind her hand.

"Oh, fuck you," Sylvain laughed.

But that smile lingered in his mind the whole rest of the day, and into the night, too.


	27. Ten Years

** **

It had been a good day. He had needed a good day. A good day wasn't necessarily peaceful, but that was because a good day wasn't just something that happened to you, it was something you invested in. Smiles, tears, shouting, screaming, all of that was fine together, as long as it felt worth it in the end.

It was worth it, because for the first time in a very long time, Sylvain did not feel plagued by dread.

In fact, when Ingrid announced she was turning in for the night, and then Felix followed suite, Sylvain even felt optimistic.

"Are you coming to bed?" Felix asked.

"Yeah," Sylvain said.

Even if he had the energy to squeeze more out of the day, it wasn't much use alone, and the thought of Felix's red cheeks and tapping feet had him optimistic. Sylvain followed them both upstairs, trailing a little behind just so he could watch over them, and he wished Ingrid a goodnight at her door. She wished him the same, and then, completely unprompted, she reached for his hand and gave it a firm squeeze.

It was important, he decided, to hope tomorrow would be good, too.

When her door closed behind her, Sylvain glanced at Felix, and Felix looked away, evidently caught.

"You want to hold my hand, too?" Sylvain teased.

He offered it on a whim, on a hope. Though Felix did not meet his eyes, he did take it. Sylvain laced their fingers together and held tight. Neither said anything as they climbed the stairs.

The room was chilly when they got in. There were no servants to light the fire, and Sylvain had taken the tapestry off the window that morning, and the cold glass had let any lingering heat out. It was a little excruciating to let go of Felix just to strip off his coat, but he did it anyway. He smiled when he saw Felix pull his tunic over his head and his shirt rode up with it, leaving a whole trail of goosebumps in the hem's wake. Felix made an exaggerated shivery noise.

"Can you light a fire?" Felix asked.

Sylvain generally only employed his woefully underpracticed fire magic for impractical pursuits, but for the time they'd been here, he had become Felix's designated firestarter. He figured it was kind of him, considering that of the two of them, the one living in an abandoned village was the one who had to clip sparks off a firesteel or the back of a hunting knife if he expected to be warm or eat a hot meal that day. Sylvain didn't mind. It also let him be the first to warm his hands by the fire, and upon spying Felix still shirtless, he leant over and pressed the back of his hand upon the small of Felix's back.

Felix jumped like a startled cat.

"I'm just trying to help!" Sylvain exclaimed as he was swatted away.

"Yes, and I get it," Felix said, "you are _warm_."

Sylvain chuckled and shucked off his trousers to crawl into bed. Felix rolled his eyes, pulled on his nightshirt and then began stretching, as he often did. Sylvain turned his gaze to the ceiling.

For a moment they were both quiet again, with just the low fire crackling as it took to the logs, and the sound of the wind behind the glass. He heard Felix's shoulder pop as he raised his arms above his head and stretched them out. His neck cracked, too.

"Felix?"

"What?"

"Thanks for today."

"What for?" Felix asked.

Sylvain scoffed. Typical.

"For everything," he said. "For humouring it all. I figured you knew what I was trying to do, and… well, it was really nice to feel like we were all together again, for real."

Felix didn't say anything. He just started doing low lunges, each tediously slow and meticulous. It made Sylvain's calves burn just looking at him. Sylvain sighed. It wasn't the best bed in the world, but it sure felt comfortable compared to tugging on his own hamstrings.

"I think that was the happiest I've been in a while," Sylvain said. "I've been thinking that all night."

"Ingrid smacked you," Felix said.

"Well, I deserved it," Sylvain said. He paused. "And I'll deserve it again if…"

"Then just don't fuck up."

"I will, though," Sylvain said, and he frowned up at the ceiling.

"Oh, you will," Felix replied. Sylvain glanced over, his gaze drawn irrestistably the moment he felt Felix's eyes on him. Felix had the gall to look amused. "But you can learn to take responsibility. Stop blaming everyone around you like it's never your fault."

"Ouch," Sylvain murmured. Did he _ask_? Even so, he grimaced. "True, though."

"It is true." Felix finished stretching and he climbed into bed, slipping under the covers and pulling them up all the way to his chin. His long dark hair fanned out across the pillow, his bangs falling back out of his face. "Though it's a good sign, if you can see that for yourself."

Felix looked at him.

"I mean, really see it. Not just playing it off to get out of trouble."

Sylvain gazed back at him, something just behind his teeth. He had a long way to go, but he hoped he really was changing. The past few years had been a boring thrum of moderation, and the past few months had been ugly lows and screaming highs, and maybe he did want to blame other people for the parts that dragged him down — Hubert, Edelgard, Felix, Ingrid. But he knew it wasn't their fault. It was his, because he kept making choices that led to misery. Maybe he deserved better. _Maybe._

"I guess," Sylvain said.

"I'm right."

"You are," Sylvain agreed. "Wanna turn the light out?"

"I'm settled."

Sylvain sighed and leaned over Felix to reach the lamp. Felix made no effort to get out of the way, but Sylvain knew if he didn't put the lamp out himself, they'd fall asleep with it on. Felix gave a little _oof_ when Sylvain deliberately leaned against his chest, and once he'd cut off the oil, he returned to his side of the bed.

For a moment, both of them were silent. Sylvain listened to Felix breathe, calm and steady but nowhere near sleep. He glanced aside and saw Felix watching him in turn.

"Spit it out," Felix said.

"Uh… I was thinking about something kind of similar the other day," Sylvain admitted. "About something Miklan told me when I was a kid."

"Oh?"

"I threw some tantrum because I couldn't activate my crest," Sylvain said, a little carelessly. No big deal. "He was a great fighter. Incredible, actually, I wanted to be just like him. He dragged me back to the training ring and said I shouldn't get mad for not being able to do it perfectly at first. That I had to work on it instead of blaming myself."

Sylvain couldn't remember the last time he'd talked to someone about Miklan with any neutrality, let alone positivity. It felt awful, but he decided not to apologize for it. If Felix was troubled by it in any way, he didn't show it.

"I don't think I can teach myself to be a good person the way I can teach myself to kill people, though," Sylvain admitted.

"No, it works exactly the same way," Felix said. He sighed, as though he didn’t like having to explain something very complicated to a very small child, but Sylvain didn't mind. He kind of liked it. He wanted to listen. He wanted Felix to feel like he'd listen. "You can’t just decide to be a better person any more than you can decide to be a better swordsman, or a better lover, or whatever it is you want. You'll just get demoralized that way. If you don't know how to handle what you've done, or what you _do_, your mind is going to do anything it can to avoid taking responsibility for it."

"Like if you don't have a good parry, you're just stuck on the defensive."

"Exactly," Felix said. "So you just have to trust that your mind will let you process that stuff when you're ready. Until then, just… train."

“How?”

“You just keep trying until it’s comfortable,” Felix said. He truthfully didn't sound like he knew, either, but Sylvain just wanted to hear him keep going. “You just keep at it.”

“How do you know?”

Felix hesitated.

"Because I've had to set my own expectations for myself, after leaving Faerghus behind," Felix said, finally. And as though he'd changed his mind, as though he couldn't bear to linger on it, he continued: "And we watched Dimitri struggle against it. He never changed. He just pretended everything was fine.”

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

"Don't," Felix warned him, and he sat up in bed, just enough to lean on an elbow. "Don't do that _I'm just like him _thing again. Just… focus on yourself."

A chuckle bubbled off Sylvain's lips.

"Alright," he said.

Sylvain rolled right over onto his side, edging closer, and he reached for Felix. His broad palm closed around Felix's wrist, and though Felix initially shifted like he might pull away, he stayed still. He was warm. Bed-warm. Sylvan ran his fingertips along the inside of Felix's wrist, along that little dip in the middle.

"Felix?"

"You already have my attention," Felix said, a touch impatiently, but that only brought a further smile to Sylvain's lips.

“You don’t have to go, you know,” Sylvain said. He felt painfully aware of the distance between them; Felix's cool advice, doled out on the eve of his departure, and Sylvain, the purposeless man, itching for someone's genuine affection. Did Felix feel he was safe under Ingrid's eyes?

"I do have to," Felix said.

Sylvain nodded. It was enough to have one last day with Felix, and then sleep together one last night, in the same bed, as close as he'd ever get. Felix glanced down at the fingers running smoothly down his wrist and Sylvain felt grateful that he'd tolerate even that. Sylvain knew that was his lot. He'd known it for a long time. It was better to be satisfied than to rail against reality for not bending to his will.

But his heart twisted a little, imagining how it would be tomorrow night. Alone.

"I'm going to miss training with you," Sylvain said. "Not because I can get in shape. I just like spending time with you. And I'll miss arguing with you, and hearing you tell me to shut up, and going through Ferdinand's house and laughing at his ugly decor."

"It was nice to see each other again," Felix agreed, and though a smile tugged at his lips, he sounded a little suspicious. Cool. Distant.

"There _is _going to be a next time, yeah?" Sylvain asked. He didn't like how insecure it sounded, but it was already out. It was there. He swallowed his breath. "You're not just saying you'll visit in spring."

"Of course," Felix said. "I'll visit occasionally, if you stay here."

Sylvain couldn't imagine returning to Fhirdiad after reporting to Edelgard, much less staying in Fhirdiad forever, but maybe he would have to. It felt like a challenge. It felt conditional.

"And you'll know where I am," Felix said.

Sylvain smiled, but it felt sad.

"Yeah, but…" he trailed. "Maybe I'll come to Remire."

"No, you can't," Felix said, sensibly. “It’s not the place for you."

"There's no girls," Sylvain said, softly. "No alcohol. No temptations. Just me and you."

In the dark, he couldn’t be certain, but he thought Felix was looking at him. Really looking. Sylvain imagined that his gaze was more tender than it really was, and then Felix let out a soft breath, something close to a laugh.

“After a day or two I think you’d go insane," Felix said, amused. "You'd drive _me_ insane, living like that! You need people.”

"And you don't?"

"Not the way you do," Felix informed him. "You're perpetually eighteen. You need people to amuse you and play you music and dance with you and all those things. You want people so you can be sure people like you. As long as you have people, you don't need anything else. You just have to learn to let them support you as much as you support them."

Sylvain laughed.

“You’re like eighty years old!” Sylvain said. “You’re a wise old man.”

“Or maybe I just use my _brain_ once in a while.”

“Oh, that’s it,” Sylvain said, and he grabbed Felix around the middle. Felix let out a yelp — a pleasantly immature sound out of such an ancient being! — but he tussled right back, fumbling to throw Sylvain off. Sylvain laughed right in his ear, repeating: “You’re so smart, huh? You’re so smart? Like I haven’t heard every dumb thing out of your mouth for twenty years—“

“Get off me!” Felix protested, but there was a smirk on his face, evidently pleased with his ability to rile Sylvain up. Sylvain couldn’t quite pin him down, but he kept trying, stopping only when Felix snared two of Sylvain’s fingers in a hold. Felix bent them back, easing a wailing laugh out of Sylvain. He wasn’t about to actually break them, so Sylvain just laid there laughing until Felix let him go.

“You’re such a kid,” Felix said. “All this sloppy tussling, who does that?”

“You, actually,” Sylvain said. “With me.”

Felix groaned at him. That _grow up_ kind of groan, but the kind that was definitely at least a little in love with Sylvain’s bullshit.

Sylvain shifted down the bed, crowding Felix’s side of it. Felix just watched him. Sylvain imagined that if it were daylight, he could count every eyelash, and every blemish on Felix’s skin. He gently reached out and ran his fingertips along the curve of Felix’s jaw, and up to a spot on his cheekbone where there was a tiny divot — Sylvain had accidentally thrown a rock at him when they were children. Sylvain smiled thinking about it. Felix had cried furiously and had taken weeks to forgive him. He’d been so sensitive.

“What?” Felix said, almost as if something were wrong.

“Nothing,” Sylvain said, passing the pad of his thumb over that spot. He grinned and nudged himself in so they were nose to nose. “You look good. You’re smiling.”

Felix scoffed and his eyes fluttered shut for a moment. Sylvain closed the distance between their lips and kissed him, and Felix held back at first, but Sylvain lingered, a little insistent, a little desperate. Felix slowly met his enthusiasm and eased it down into something more tender, more gentle.

Wow, if he wasn’t capable of such sweetness.

Sylvain couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed someone so softly. He raised himself up onto an elbow, as much as he could without breaking off for longer than a second, and he eased his body up against Felix’s. The thin linen of their sleeping clothes did nothing to disguise the hard edges of Felix’s lean hips, and Sylvain propped himself up a little higher as Felix relaxed back. Felix let out a hum against his lips and brought his hands up to clutch at Sylvain — one hand on his bicep, where it was tensed against the mattress, and the other coasting up his chest. Sylvain’s heart hammered. His everything hammered. He was just so fucking happy.

He withdrew for a moment just to smile. Felix looked flustered, just the _slightest_ touch, but Sylvain thought it was about the cutest thing he’d ever seen. He grinned, resettling himself more comfortably against Felix, and then he reached for the drawstring on Felix’s nightshirt. It fell open, and Sylvain trailed his fingertips down Felix's chest, right down to the crux of the placket. He watched the apple of Felix's throat rise and fall.

"Sylvain…"

"Take it off," Sylvain suggested. He kissed Felix again, and it was Felix's turn to linger in it, even as Sylvain started pawing at his hem. When he pulled back, Felix obliged, fumbling to get it off with Sylvain overtop him; Sylvain delighted at seeing the ripple of tension across his abs when he curled his shoulders forward, and feeling the gentle prickle of his skin in the cold air. Sylvain took the shirt and tossed it away, and then he laid Felix out flat again after, pushing him down by the shoulder. Felix drew a deep breath and Sylvain let his gaze fall further down.

A rumble slipped from the back of his throat at the sight of Felix's cock laid against his stomach.

He hooked an arm under Felix's knees and pulled them up, scooting into the space he'd made and letting the underside of Felix's legs fall against his chest. He pressed his hips forward, his cock jutting into the underside of Felix's groin, through the loose waist of his trousers. Felix's gaze darted down, and then right back up again.

“I want to fuck you so bad,” Sylvain told him, leaning in over him and pressing his knees towards his chest. "I've wanted to fuck you since Ferdinand's place… and since Enbarr… since…"

Something passed across Felix's face. A curl of something distinctly unpleasant passed through Sylvain's gut. That was dread, and it was dread that felt justified when Felix muttered something and then squirmed under Sylvain's arms.

"Too fast?" he murmured.

Felix leant away. Sylvain didn't let him go. He leaned in to nuzzle at him, as if that could make it better, but still, Felix wanted up. Sylvain let him.

“Maybe, just…” Felix said, groping for his shirt. He found it and put it back on, buttoning the front up to the collar. “Listen, I’m leaving in the morning. I should get some rest.”

“Oh? Okay. That’s okay...” Sylvain trailed off, awkwardly. Disappointment overwhelmed him. Sylvain lingered a moment, but now he felt less comfortable and intimate and loving and more foolish. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but he didn’t want to push it.

He settled on just brushing Felix’s hair out of his face to kiss his temple, which Felix did allow, and then he backed off, resuming his post on his side of the bed. He laid there and looked up at the ceiling and sighed audibly. Felix didn’t say anything, but then he turned over abruptly and nestled against Sylvain’s side. Sylvain froze as Felix laid his head on his shoulder.

“You want to cuddle?” Sylvain asked, lightly, but he put an arm around him. Sylvain wasn’t sure why this happened. He didn’t understand.

“Don’t make me feel like an asshole,” Felix said defensively, as if he had not settled there himself. His breath was warm on Sylvain’s collarbone. “I just… shouldn’t sleep with you.”

“Okay... Why not?”

Felix didn’t reply.

“Being shy is one thing, but I know you’re not shy,” Sylvain said. "And it's not like you're a…"

He trailed. Actually, was Felix a virgin?

“No,” Felix said, a little bluntly.

“Then what?” Sylvain asked. He ran a fingertip in circles on Felix’s side, though his shirt, and felt him shiver pleasantly. “Don’t get mad at me for saying this, but I can tell you _want_ it. I just don’t get why you pull away. In Enbarr, you wanted me, but you wouldn't stay…”

Felix didn’t say anything for a moment. Sylvain was thoroughly convinced he was about to be summarily ignored by someone laying in his arms, which was not only a new low but entirely unsurprising from Felix. But Felix finally looked up at him, just for the briefest second before looking away again.

“You don’t stay with people you sleep with,” Felix said. His voice was just a little hesitant. "And that…_ I want to fuck you_ thing. That's not… ugh."

Sylvain swallowed his breath and looked down Felix’s nose.

“Hey,” he said. “That’s not... you’re not the same as the others, Felix.”

Felix sighed. Sylvain felt it through his chest, a damning little breath that made his own catch.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve heard you say that over the years,” Felix said. “How many times you’d _brag_ to me about bowling girls over with that line.”

“You’re not just anyone,” Sylvain replied, “You’re Felix. I get how it sounds like some line, but it’s really not with_ you_.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Felix replied. “Not if you’re just going to make me sound unreasonable.”

“I’m not,” Sylvain said, suddenly feeling like he'd walked in to a trap. He wanted to coast back to mere minutes ago, when he felt on top of the world. “That’s not fair. I’m being honest with you.”

Felix sat up. Sylvain did the same, and he knew in that moment that Felix wasn’t going to be assuaged. Fear flooded him so intensely that he opened his mouth and it spilled out:

“You seriously think I'd be your friend for decades just to get laid and then dump you? How am I not supposed to be defensive if that's what you think of me?”

Felix got out of bed entirely. He pulled his trousers from where they'd been folded on the windowsill, and he pulled them on with a hastiness that Sylvain found all too familiar.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Sylvain said. “If I plead with you it’s a line, if I defend myself I’m the asshole — I’m just saying, Felix. So you don't want to be talked to like that, that’s okay, but I still think we’re on the same page. I think you want to sleep with me as much as I want to with you. Why is this an argument?”

Felix was too busy tucking his shirt into his obscenely fitted trousers, and he nearly stumbled trying to do it as fast as possible. Sylvain realized Felix was sporting an erection, and watching Felix rearrange himself into his pants made his jaw tighten. He felt crazy. Why was this happening? Why _hadn’t_ this happened?

What had he done wrong?

“Where are you even going?” Sylvain asked. He got up too.

“Elsewhere,” Felix said.

Sylvain made for the door at the same time that Felix did. Felix got the handle open, and Sylvain didn't think. He rushed to it and shoved it closed again, and in case that wasn't enough, he forced his way between Felix and the door, blocking it.

“Felix,” Sylvain pleaded. “This is the fourth time now. We have to talk. We have to settle this.”

Felix shifted as though he might brawl Sylvain for the right to leave, but Sylvain dug his heels in, arms splayed, his back drawn as tall and impassable as he could. If he could block every inch of that door, he would. Felix sized him up instead.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Sylvain demanded. “You can't leave me like this. You can't—”

“You are a _disaster_,” Felix uttered. His voice dropped to a hiss. “You think we’re on the same page? We’re not.”

“_Why _not?”

Felix squared his jaw.

“Because I’ve sat on my feelings for you for at least ten years, _waiting_ while you chased everything with a pulse,” Felix shot back. “And every time we’ve come close, _you’ve_ gone right back to your ways like it never even happened. In Enbarr—”

Felix kept talking, but Sylvain couldn't hear it. Ten years? Ten fucking years? Sylvain's mind stumbled through putting together graceful response and came up with nothing. His mind repeated ten like a mantra. Ten? _Ten? _Ten_ at least?_

“T-that’s bullshit,” Sylvain retorted, finally, voice struggling past the lump in his throat. Ten? _Ten!_ “If I'd thought for even a second you actually wanted to be with me, I would have dropped anyone in a heartbeat."

But he didn’t think Felix would _lie_, either.

“That’s exactly the problem,” Felix said. “You _will _drop anyone that way. And who knows? Maybe this time would be different. But I’m not willing to stake our friendship on a _this time. _You’re not ready.”

Sylvain felt himself shaking.

“I’d rather be just your friend for the rest of our lives than risk ending up a notch in your bedpost,” Felix said.

“You’re such an asshole,” Sylvain said, incredulous. He felt like he was going to puke; Felix wasn't the asshole here. He barreled on, right from his gut: “If you don’t want to be one of my notches, then why do you start with me? What the fuck is that about? Real genius, Felix. Blow me every few years and then refuse to talk about it — you know why that is? Because you don't want me. You _don't._ Otherwise—_ otherwise––!_”

He didn't finish. That was fine. Felix didn't reply. Sylvain saw on his face that he had plenty more to say, but that was just Felix, wasn't it? He'd given up. Felix wasn't about to entertain anything he said, because he'd already made up his mind about Sylvain being the way he was, and there was no room left for nuance after that.

“I can’t _do _this anymore,” Sylvain insisted. “I love the petty arguments but I can’t live with you keeping me at arm's length, I can’t do it — I want… I want…"

Sylvain knew what he wanted to say, but it died in his throat, too embarrassing to confess to after how he'd acted. Felix's lips tensed. He looked away entirely. Sylvain thought he looked upset, which was the exact opposite of what he was trying to achieve, and that stung worst of all, even when Felix finally said:

"I don't want to hear it." He paused. "You're not actually ready to say it, and until you are, it's just… empty words. Just like..."

He trailed.

“You never really even _asked_ me to stay,” Felix said. “You just hoped I would give in if you dropped enough hints, and then I’d be back to watching you desperately look for affection.”

Sylvain felt any remaining will to fight extinguish, snuffed between Felix's pinched fingers. For a moment he stood there, leaning against the door, and then he hung his head to look at the floor. Felix's feet were bare. Was he so eager to get away from this conversation that he was willing to walk through the cold castle barefoot in the middle of winter without even grabbing his boots? Was it that important to get away from _him_?

"I'm going to go," Sylvain relented. "_You_ sleep here. You've got a long trip ahead of you and need to be rested. I'm going to be here a while."

Felix nodded, and without another word, the two of them set about the business of settling things: Felix stripping his pants back off and returning to their bed, Sylvain dressing. If it weren't for the trembling in his fingers, it might have felt soldier-like. Sylvain even stood in the middle of the room to get his boots on, not daring to sit on the edge of the bed where he could reach Felix, who rolled over and turned his back to him. Felix looked like he was frozen there, not even _breathing_. Sylvain felt a rock the size of a fist settled at the back of his throat, but when he finished with his boots, he grabbed his coat and pulled it on.

He didn't think he was going to sleep any time soon. He needed to find somewhere to be.

Where to go was a question he didn't really have an answer for, but that was like so many things in his life. Where he might be standing ten minutes from now felt as ambiguous as what he really wanted: it felt like every day, he decided on some new goal or direction for himself, only to decide on something else a moment later.

But, he thought, no matter what he did with his future, he now desperately wanted Felix in it. It wasn't going to be that way, though. Friendship or feelings or not, Felix was leaving. Sylvain doubted that it would be any different even if the evening had gone perfectly.

Felix wasn't going to stay for him. Sylvain hadn't asked him to stay.

Sylvain hadn't made himself a man worth staying for.

Sylvain took the long stairs down to ground level, passing several knights on their rounds. While he still felt like he was under a perpetual scrutiny or risk of being reported back to Ingrid or the Captain for _something_, this time he just pushed right past them and ignored the odd looks he got. He slipped out the front door and took the steps down to the gates. It was bitter cold, and he hadn't really layered properly, but he didn't bother to put his hood up. If someone wanted to start with him, they were welcome to it. He would welcome it.

Snow was falling, and it had been falling long enough to put a fresh white blanket over the boot-stomped mess he'd passed through that morning. The path was flanked by big snow banks that would be taller in the morning when the knights shovelled it clear. Big white flakes spiralled on the air, catching in his hair and on his eyelashes, melting as they touched his skin. He'd forgotten his gloves, too, so he just curled his fingers close to his palms and pocketed them. Sylvain made his way to the castle's main gate, soles crunching, his breath fogging on the sharp air. He looked up. He couldn't see a single star in the sky that night.

Of course, the gate was closed, so he made his way to the man door. It was locked. Sylvain sighed, rattling the iron handle in the process, and then begrudgingly walked to the gatehouse. It opened before he could knock, light spilling out from inside. Sylvain blinked against it. The elderly gatekeeper gave him a questioning look, apparently having watched him try the door.

"No one's allowed in or out after dark," the gatekeeper said. "Go back inside, lad."

Sylvain didn't much feel like smiling, but he tried anyway. It felt like his face was just going to tear in the process. He fixed the gatekeeper with the kindest look he could. He hoped the shivers wracking him didn't look pathetic.

"I was hoping you could make an exception just this once," Sylvain said.

"There isn't anything out there that can't wait until morning," the gatekeeper replied. "Go on. Back to bed."

Sylvain didn't have it in him to argue or sweet-talk his way through, and he knew that even if he had his coin purse on him, it wasn't nearly fat enough to waste on a petty bribe. Sylvain just lingered on the step for a moment, and for a split second, he wondered if he could force his way through. He wondered if he could shove his way into the booth and take the keys for the mandoor himself, or crank the gates open. He thought he could take this old guy handily and be free.

He thought he could feel his_ teeth_ shaking.

He smiled wider and conceded: "Alright. Sorry for wasting your time."

The gatekeeper closed the door. Sylvain exhaled hard and crunched his way back across the walk. Well, he decided, if he wasn't going out into the city, he could go down to the castle's buttery and see if he could pilfer a bottle or two of something drinkable.

He stopped in his tracks and looked back at the gate, and at the lone trail of footprints he'd left.

Was that what he was doing? Going into the city to drink and carouse? Would he sleep in some whorehouse?

Sylvain reminded himself that he was trying to be more responsible. More dependable. What was he doing, shaking out here, desperate, upset, alone? Ingrid and Felix would both be very cross with him if he did anything stupid, and he wanted to be up early the next day, as both of them no doubt would be. To had to make sure he could see Felix off. He had to say goodbye, so he had to stay closer to home. (Or whatever Fhirdiad was to him.)

Sylvain looked at the snow and decided he'd just shovel it, at least until he got tired. He walked back to the gatehouse and fetched a shovel that was leaning up against its wall, and he set about clearing away the walkway The dull metal edge of the shovel scraped against the stone, and he felt sore even after a few minutes, but he persisted. Sylvain figured someone would have to do it come morning, and Fhirdiad probably didn't employ anyone with fire magic anymore to clear it. He ignored the knights on the wall above watching him, and he ignored the gatekeeper when he opened the door just to see who the hell was shovelling at that hour.

Sylvain got about a quarter of it done before his hands were too numb to properly hold the shovel, his knuckles white and stinging and his grip weakened. His back had started to ache, too, a dull stab level with his kidneys, and when he felt that, he knew he was going to regret more about that evening than just oh, fucking himself over by _pissing his life away_ fucking people who didn't care about him when Felix was RIGHT fucking THERE—

Sylvain speared the shovel into the snowbank, fingers stinging and back screaming at him, and went back inside.

It wasn't too much warmer inside, not in that drafty stone foyer, and so Sylvain went down to one of the drawing rooms that he knew still had couches. He was giving up for the night. A couple of knights were sitting playing cards at one of the tables, but he ignored them to pick out the most agreeable place to sprawl out, which was the couch closest to the fire. He tracked water in the whole way on his boots and coat, but at the very least he shucked those off before collapsing on the couch.

"Hey," one of the knights called, "are you alright?"

"Yeah," Sylvain said, before cupping his hands to his mouth and blowing on them. It didn't do much, so he settled on tucking his stiff fingers under his arms. He tipped himself over. The couch was not comfortable, but what was, in this world? He muttered on: "You know how it is — sometimes you're the worst thing to happen to everyone, including yourself."

That knight was quiet for a moment, and then both of them chuckled awkwardly. They didn't talk to him again. That was okay by Sylvain. He sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to put it all from his mind.

He slept fitfully.

Maybe the foyer was the wrong place to settle in. Maybe he could have crept in with Felix again under cover of darkness, or seen if Ingrid would take pity on him and take him into hers. Barring those, the chapel would have been quieter. Instead, he spent the night sleeping in small bursts through to dawn, waking when the knights returned from the night watch, and then again when another shift set out for the morning. Sylvain just contorted himself to face the backrest despite his long legs and broad shoulders making it hard to get comfortable. He ignored people talking across the room. He ignored when someone leant against the back of the couch, and when someone kicked his boots across the floor. It was miserable sleep but he couldn't drag himself out of it any better than he could fall into it; he barely stirred when someone put a hand to his forehead and gently tousled his hair back, merely bringing up a hand of his own to brush them off. They went away.

He was only properly roused when Ingrid nudged him until he opened his eyes and acknowledged her. He knew it was her. The only other person who might try was Felix, and Felix…

"What d'you want?" he asked her, stumbling over his own tongue.

She sighed and took his arm between her hands, and she tugged him until he sat up, his neck singing out. He must have slept at an odd angle.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, groggily. "What time is it?"

"Late," she said.

Oh no. His heart twisted and he couldn't bring himself to look at her. He knew he'd missed Felix. There wasn't a chance Felix would hang around this late, not under even the best of circumstances. He tiredly withdrew his arm from Ingrid's grip, and he dropped down to an elbow. She frowned.

“Felix left this morning,” she said. His face must have betrayed him because her voice softened to continue: “Do you know anything about that?”

She gestured vaguely at him, at the couch. She didn’t sound angry or judgmental, so he supposed Felix hadn’t told her anything. That itself wasn’t surprising. She seemed a little sad about it, though. He wondered if she blamed him, or she thought he'd spent the night out carousing. Sylvain swallowed his breath.

“Uh,” he said, “that’s my fault.”

Ingrid frowned.

“We had an argument,” he said. “I...”

He didn’t really know how Ingrid would react to the truth. To any of it. She’d heard enough about his sex life over the years that perhaps she would find it a relief that he’d managed some semblance of deep-seated love for another person, but Felix? Maybe Felix was too close to home. That could go either way.

Ingrid raised an eyebrow.

“You two argue all the time,” she said. “It must have been pretty serious.”

“I...”

_Out with it!_

“I told him I had feelings for him,” Sylvain confessed. “And we were kissing, and then he got upset and told me he didn’t want to be with me because I can’t commit. He was furious.”

Ingrid didn’t seem to know what to say, but she didn’t seem surprised, either. Sylvain was almost a little wounded by that — did other people notice? Until last night he hadn’t really thought Felix would have ever felt anything but friendship or a bond of fraternity towards him. It felt like a kick in the teeth for other people to know before he did.

“You know, it's not the first time we've slept together, but he's never talked about it before," Sylvain said, apprehensive of her silence. "It happened during the war, and just after the war, and before we came to Fhirdiad…”

He swallowed his breath.

"But last night…"

He trailed.

Ingrid hummed, and her expression momentarily tightened. Too much information? Sylvain sighed and shifted over for her. She sat down, watching him as though he were on the brink of some sort of meltdown. He wasn’t. He was just exhausted.

Finally, she said: “Maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping with him at all without talking about these things first.”

“He starts it,” he said. “And if he doesn’t want to talk about it, then he shouldn’t start it.”

“Did you ever tell him before? Having feelings for him?” Ingrid asked.

Sylvain felt a pit in his stomach when he had to answer: "No."

Ingrid paused.

"Do you think maybe you're sending some mixed signals?"

He thought back to when Felix had blown him in Enbarr. He couldn't quite recall how they'd got there -- they'd been arguing, and Sylvain had felt sad, but Sylvain always felt sad. The difference was that he was sad about Felix not wanting to see him again, and he'd... no, he'd been more than sad. He'd been angry about it, too. He'd been hurt and lonely, and left behind, and unwanted, and scared of his future, but that was so typical that before this moment, he hadn't really thought about what Felix had seen. What had Felix seen then?

What had he seen in the times before that?

"Well... I guess I didn’t just come out and _say_ that, I just…" Sylvain trailed. "I _thought_ it was pretty clear."

"You are not clear about love, or sex, or any of those things," Ingrid said. "Not in the slightest."

He threw her a puzzled look. She raised an eyebrow at him and then shook her head again. For a moment they sat in silence, and he felt like a bedraggled mess, particularly next to her, all neatly groomed and prepared for a day of shepherding Fhirdiad. He had no idea what he was doing. Apparently, he had no idea what clarity meant. He felt more unclear than ever.

"I've known you my entire life, Sylvain," she reminded him, "and I still sometimes have no idea why you do what you do. I've learned to ignore it when you do it to _me_, but I also don't have romantic feelings for you. If Felix does, it's probably pretty confusing for him."

"Hey," Sylvain replied. He didn't get why she would side with Felix so quickly, but then again, he supposed he did. "If he just _said_\--"

"You're not listening," Ingrid told him, firmly. "You just said he _told_ you he didn't think you'd commit to him, and that sounds very clear to me. He’s right to be worried when you have no concept of being in a relationship."

"Felix has never been in a relationship," Sylvain argued.

Ingrid frowned. She opened her mouth to reply, thought better of it, and then said something else:

"He most definitely has,” Ingrid replied.

That made Sylvain pause. He was not inclined to believe her; how would she know? She hadn't seen Felix since the end of the war, either, and he found it difficult to believe that she and Felix had some conversation by the fire about whoever Felix had been with in... where? Remire? Sylvain struggled to put together a timeline of their lives and find the spaces where Felix could have not only conceivably been in not only a relationship, but a serious one, that Sylvain had _never_ been told about. It couldn't have been at the Academy. Was it during the war, when they were in Fhirdiad, or maybe when Felix was in Fraldarius? Certainly not—

"While I was still with Dimitri, and you and Felix were back with Edelgard?" He felt his blood run cold. “With who? Why didn’t I know?”

“It's not really my business to say if he hasn't told you himself,” Ingrid replied. "And you weren't there, Sylvain. We had almost no communication with you for years. For all we knew, you had defected. How was he supposed to tell you?"

Point.

Sylvain grimaced.

“Okay, well, I’ve had relationships,” Sylvain said, not wanting to talk about the war or what it had done to any of them. He felt like maybe he was the only one staying on topic, which was supposed to be Felix having left that morning. "And it takes two. He should have—"

“Name one.”

“Uh, do you want me to _list_ them...?”

“One — just_ one_ — that lasted longer than a week, and did not overlap with anyone else. One that was not breaking up and getting back with someone five times in six weeks. One that wasn't just about sex." She almost seemed like she was done, but then she gave him one last parting shot, just to stop any name that might have come to mind prematurely: "One where you were _happy_.”

He felt like an idiot for throwing down that challenge, because that wiped his entire slate clear. Ingrid shook her head at him already, knowing fully that there wasn't a single answer he could give that would satisfy more than one or two of those categories. Sylvain buried his face in his hands for a moment.

"There's nothing wrong with just sex," Sylvain said. And then, though it sounded stupid before he even let it leave his mouth, he muttered: "I love sex."

“You don’t actually love sex,” Ingrid said. “You like feeling wanted.”

Sylvain winced as though he’d been struck. The concept was wholly unsurprising, but no one had ever bluntly told him that before, and he threw Ingrid a look of complete betrayal. Hadn’t he been through enough?

“Ingrid,” he protested, “that’s... that’s unfair. Fuck, it's too early for this.”

She shrugged. Maybe it was, but the gloves had been off ever since he arrived in Fhirdiad, and maybe it felt a little okay from her mouth.

“Listen. Do you remember when we were at Garreg Mach, you once gave us that stupid spiel about how you like to go down on women?”

“Vaguely.”

“Okay. Setting aside how embarrassing that was to listen to... not once did your points ever circle back to anything that wasn’t about you. So what if they enjoyed it? You only did it because then they’d come back. I can’t imagine that kind of pressure to enjoy being with you the first time or _else_.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You _do_ cut people out if they aren’t going to make you feel good. Can you blame Felix?”

Sylvain slouched against the back of the couch, so far his hips nearly went off the seat. He had a million snappy retorts primed behind his teeth, but he was so tired of himself that nothing seemed worth it. The idea of plucking up some sort of defensive ire or witty repartee drained him of what little reserves he had left. He turned his face to the side to look at her. She was sitting sideways on the couch in order to fully face him, and she reached out to put a hand on his. He let her, even though a tiny part of him resented it. Felix had held his hand last. Now it was her.

Ingrid sighed.

"Come on, Sylvain," she said. She clasped his hand firmly between hers. "You're so smart. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. If you ever want to be happy, you have to stop avoiding this subject and think about it, even for just thirty seconds."

Was he smart? He had started believing all his own bullshit so long ago that he never felt like anything but Fódlan’s greatest fool.

“I’ll think about it.”

Ingrid watched him for a moment longer, and Sylvain thought she looked more than a little sad. He heaved a great sigh and put on a big smile and tipped himself over, laying his head in her lap and getting an arm around her waist. He felt her freeze up for an instant, but then she sighed, doubling over him to embrace him in turn.

They'd done this years ago, when Felix had left them in Enbarr. At least this time they knew where he'd gone and where to find him if they were so compelled, but that older feeling flooded back and made Sylvain feel like their couch was adrift at sea, and that his feet were trailing in ice cold water. Ingrid leant the weight of her upper body against his back and he sighed, pulling her in tighter. She was resilient, and if she hadn't made her duty the bedrock of her life, maybe she would have been swept away like he was.

He had to appreciate that more. He owed his life to her.

"I love you, Ingrid," he said. He wanted to add a _truthfully_ or a _really_ to make sure she knew it, but he didn't want his genuineness to seem in need of defence. She didn't reply for a moment, but she lingered atop him, and he felt her breathe out, long and tired.

“I love you too, Sylvain,” she murmured, finally. “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out between you and Felix.”

“Hey,” he murmured against her thigh. “Enough of that — I’m comforting _you_ now. You looked so sad.”

“I'm okay. Just upset that Felix left without a goodbye,” she said, running a hand down his back, up and down.

"I know," he said. He shifted to glance up at her, partially blocked by his own arm, but he couldn't see her face anyway. "Hey, if he makes you cry, I'll go after him just to kick his ass."

"I'd do it myself," she replied, "but thank you."

For a moment they laid there quietly, Sylvain feeling like he could just drift off to sleep in her arms. Then she made a sound, something veering amused. She patted his back. “Hey, did you shovel? The gatekeeper said you were shovelling, which was nice of you, but the parts you shovelled are… pretty rough…”

He let out a groan that turned into a chuckle.

"Yeah…"


	28. Long Live The Kingdom

** **

Sylvain watched the blue banners on the horizon. There was a lump in his throat that hadn't gone away for days. The messenger who rode hard ahead of the army had told them that Dimitri's forces had been successful in repelling the Empire, but that there had been a significant number of casualties on their own end. Rhea had not commented on it publicly yet, but that there would be no victory reception spoke volumes.

It wasn't surprising. Though the war had started scarcely a year ago, their resources had already been spread thin. The border was too large, and there weren't enough soldiers. They were fighting a war on several sides. Not only was the Empire testing their borders to the south at every opportunity in order to get at the Church, but the lords of Faerghus were constantly falling into odds with their king in Fhirdiad. If the royal army wasn't riding out west to quell some rebellion, it was headed east to convince lords straddling the fence to contribute more, more and more to the war effort. Faerghus, it was argued, was a Kingdom, not an alliance — a lord was obligated to follow his king, and the king wanted to go to war. But Faerghus, it was also argued, was a Kingdom, and the due process for removing an inadequate king demanded bloodshed.

Sylvain had expected Dimitri would take time to adjust to his role. These things always took time. He knew that. No one would expect otherwise, especially the condition that Faerghus was in before the war. Sylvain did not think that was unreasonable. He still felt that Dimitri would be a great leader somewhere down the line, rather than a great squasher of rebellions, or a great force of nature on the battlefield.

_Sometimes, though…_

Sylvain tore his eyes away from the banners and headed inside, taking the winding stairs down to the main level, where he intended to greet his friends. He hoped that he would run into Felix along the way, but it was a pointless hope; Felix never came down to welcome Dimitri back. It drove just about everyone crazy, Sylvain included. The only reason he got away with it was because his father was too busy with the war to enforce any etiquette lessons.

The first person Sylvain spotted was Dedue; not terribly susprising, given how tall he stood above the rest, especially in marching boots. He walked with his eyes on Dimitri and Ingrid, who walked side-by-side but seemed prepared to leap at other's throats, Dimitri spitting angry and Ingrid in a steaming, righteous fury. Sylvain inhaled sharply; Ingrid seemed perfectly controlled, but Sylvain wasn't so sure about Dimitri. He picked up his pace and rushed down the last few steps and position himself between them, a hand on each of their shoulders, and he smiled. Dimitri threw him a look so tense that Sylvain dropped his hands immediately, but he kept that smile nailed to his face.

"Your Majesty! Ingrid!" Sylvain said, as soothing as he could be with his heart racing. He kept himself between them, and he had to step quickly as Dimitri suddenly tried to round him. Ingrid tensed, and Sylvain turned his back on her, blocking her entirely. "Hey—What's going on? Is everything okay?"

Dimitri frowned, leaning to see around him, and Sylvain leaned with him.

"I'd like a word with the Archbishop immediately," Ingrid said.

"Sure," Sylvain said, casting the most rapid look over his shoulder he could. She scowled up at him. "We can send someone to see if we can get an audience — Your Majesty? Hey — come back!"

But Dimitri turned on his heel and stalked off, his armor jingling heavily and anger radiating off of him. Sylvain reached to intervene, but he stopped short upon seeing the state of Dimitri's cloak. It looked like he hadn't permitted anyone to take his cape from him long enough to scrub it clean of blood and dirt, and it made him look a little shabbier than his shaggy hair already did. Sylvain threw Dedue a questioning look, but Dedue met him with a stalwart glance before following in Dimitri's wake. Sylvain deflated, and the moment the two were out of sight, he turned back to Ingrid.

"What the fuck happened?" Sylvain dropped his voice to a low, urgent whisper. "You want to talk to Rhea? About what?"

"Someone needs to take him off the field," Ingrid said, her voice tight and low and _tense. _"If he keeps getting sent out to the front lines, things will only get worse. That was _horrible."_

He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so upset.

"Okay," Sylvain repeated, sure that he was going to say that a hundred times more and still not placate anyone. He reached for her and cupped her face gently, and when she did not pull away, he leaned in a little closer. "Breathe, please. Breathe. What happened?"

"He _tortured_ someone," Ingrid said.

Sylvain froze. Ingrid looked up at him, very still between his hands, her own on his wrists. He thought his heart had stopped for a moment. He hadn't been sure what to expect. Probably another fruitless argument about chivalry or knighthood or doing what was right.

"Tortured?" he said. He lowered his hands very slowly, and she nodded. There was a fury in her eyes that didn't quite jive with the quiver of her lower lip. "Are you serious?"

Ingrid didn't even need to nod again.

"Okay," Sylvain repeated, just once more. He squeezed her shoulder and then pulled away from her, body already turned to the direction that Dimitri had stormed off to, but his attention still on her. "Take a break — I'll go talk to Dimitri. Can you get Felix? We'll talk about Rhea later."

"Where is he?" Ingrid asked.

"Probably in his quarters," Sylvain said. "Tell him — yeah?"

"Yeah," Ingrid replied curtly, and both of them took off in separate directions.

Dimitri and Dedue hadn't gotten too far. Sylvain took the stairs two at a time, springing up them as if there wasn't some hideous conversation awaiting him at the top, pondering what torture entailed, and what had prompted it. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but it was probably best that he did.

Dimitri's room was at the top of a staircase, and the door was ajar. Dimitri didn't look up when Sylvain let himself in, but Dedue did. Dedue frowned, and though Sylvain was sure it wasn't anything personal, the tension on the air was palpable.

"I can do it myself," Dimitri snapped, suddenly, drawing Dedue's attention back. One of Dimitri's spaulders was only halfway unbuckled, and it swung wildly when Dimitri jerked his arm away. Dedue withdrew the offending hands peacefully.

"What would you like me to do to help you, then?" Dedue asked, his voice low and steady.

Dimitri held Dedue's gaze for a moment and then let out a long, frustrated breath. Still, he fumbled with the remaining buckle himself, trying to get a thumb under the leather strap to pry it out. Sylvain watched with his lips pressed tightly together.

"I just want to get out of this and go speak with the Archbishop," Dimitri argued, but he did not let Dedue reach for him.

"We've been on the road for three days and you've barely slept," Dedue replied, sensibly. "You need to eat something and rest first."

"I do not _need_ to rest!" Dimitri snapped.

"Whoa," Sylvain interjected. Both looked at him, but it was Dimitri's narrowed eyes and the furious dip of his brows that really stuck with Sylvain. He looked exhausted, with circles under his eyes so dark they looked almost bruised. Sylvain held his hands up in gesture; he meant no harm. "I think Dedue's right, though — you look like a mess, Your Majesty."

Sylvain dared come forward. He put a hand on Dedue's broad shoulder and smiled. Both of them were hardy enough to endure Dimitri's slings and arrows when he got like this, but Dedue had much better luck getting Dimitri to eat or sleep, and that was generally the more critical task. It didn't always work out perfectly, but it never hurt to try.

"Why don't you get Dimitri some dinner? I'll get him out of his armour."

Dedue did not smile in turn, but he did nod, and without another word he left. Sylvain watched him go, and Dimitri did too. They had a little system, Sylvain and Dedue. Sylvain wondered whether Dimitri had caught on.

"Why bother?" Dimitri groused. "I'm not going to eat it."

"In case you change your mind, that's all."

Sylvain reached for Dimitri's buckles. Dimitri jerked himself away, and Sylvain met his eyes and then came right back, slow. Dimitri sighed irritably, but he did not move away again. The two of them stood in silence for a moment, Sylvain nimbly unlatching all the buckles. Sylvain glanced up at his face periodically, still trying that smile, but Dimitri was squinting, as if the light was too much to bear.

"I need to speak with the Archbishop," Dimitri muttered, finally. "As soon as possible. It's not Ingrid's right to tell her what happened — she misunderstood the situation. I did not torture that man."

Sylvain shrugged.

"I wasn't there, so I don't know," he said. "What happened?"

"I saw that wretched henchman of _hers,_" Dimitri said, his voice growing uglier in tone with each word. "He was checking in on the fortifications at the border, the ones we were trying to knock back — but he's never far from her, always slinking at her heels. And he told me…" His words stuttered to a halt with anger. "He told me that I was _nothing_ to her. Nothing! Can you believe that?"

"Who?"

He knew.

"Hubert von Vestra!" Dimitri snapped. "Don't you pay attention?"

Sylvain's fingers slipped on a buckle anyway. He hadn't heard almost anything about the individual Black Eagles, the people he had called his friends for the better part of a year — it was too risky to include those details in letters coming into Fhirdiad, no matter what Sylvain poured out. He thought to mention it in his next letter: _Could have seen Hubert, if I went to the fight, but my father has barred me from most battles on account of future heir business. Sorry about the missed connection._

"I am paying attention," Sylvain said, patiently, but he could feel himself frowning a little. "I'm sure he was trying to rile you up, Your Majesty. She wouldn't be trying this hard to take down Faerghus if you were nothing to her."

What an odd thing to convince Dimitri of. Sylvain had long given up on ruminating on the absurdity of Edelgard wasting any of her energy on the petty delusion Dimitri was rattling in her face, but he didn't think he would help to say _yeah, you are pretty much nothing to her. Sorry. Want to join her cause?_

"But what does that have to do with the guy you didn't torture?"

Dimitri fell silent. Sylvain waited for a moment and then removed Dimitri's spaulders and set them aside, and then he started down Dimitri's arms in turn: his elbow couters, his vambraces, his gauntleted hands. Dimitri fumed the entire time, and when Sylvain started unbuckling the straps connecting the front and back of his breastplate, Dimitri finally said: "Nothing. I just…"

Sylvain set the breastplate aside and then sank to his knees to work on the thigh straps. Dimitri made no effort to help by standing straight or shifting his weight — in fact, he made the whole business harder because he was slouching, as though the weight of his duty was becoming too much. Sylvain sympathized, but Dimitri was only going to feel more and more miserable the longer he stayed in his armour.

Dimitri drew a hard breath. Sylvain glanced up at him as he took another piece of armour away. His fingers felt a wet warmth suddenly, and he glanced back down to see fresh blood on his hand. Sylvain dropped the armor with a clang and groped around until he found the source about midway up Dimitri's thigh, where the joint in the armor had been. It spilled hot. Fast.

"You're bleeding," Sylvain told him.

"What?"

Sylvain gestured with a jerk of his head.

"Oh," Dimitri said, "he stabbed me when I was overtop of him."

It must have clotted over between the padding of his armor and the armor constricting it, and then torn open when Sylvain tampered with it. Sylvain didn't need to tell Dimitri that wounds to the thighs could bleed very seriously, both because Dimitri already knew it and because he knew Dimitri was evidently too upset to care anyway. That, on its own, was fine, as long as it was dealt with.

What was not so fine was Dimitri's death wish. Sylvain understood it, but he didn't share in it. Dimitri _had_ to live to see better days.

"You didn't see a healer?"

"I didn't tell anyone," Dimitri said.

"Fuck," Sylvain sighed. He glanced at the door and concentrated for a moment, but he couldn't hear Dedue coming back. It would probably take some time to arrange a dinner that actually appealed to Dimitri. "Hey. Can you sit?"

"I think so," Dimitri said.

Together they shuffled, Sylvain still on his knees. Sylvain used his free hand to pull out Dimitri's desk chair and Dimitri sat awkwardly. Sylvain clamped his hand down a little tighter. He supposed he'd just have to wait until either it clotted enough for him to back off, or until Dedue got back and one of them could send for a healer. Dimitri sank back in the chair, exhausted, and he put his hands to his temples and breathed hard through his nose. He didn't deign to hold his own wound. Sylvain figured he might be there for a while and so he sat properly on the floor so his feet woldn't fall asleep.

"Hey," Sylvain said. "Why does Ingrid think you tortured him?"

Dimitri rolled his lips together, biting back something he couldn't bear to say. Perhaps he wanted to be angry, or defensive, or something that would spare his pride, because Dimitri was not a man who would torture someone for no good reason, and Sylvain thought he could trust that. Sylvain also knew he could trust Ingrid, though, and therein lied the problem.

"I…" Dimitri trailed. "I supposed it looked that way to her."

Sylvain hesitated. Something occurred to him.

"Dimitri," he said, gently. "What did you do?"

_What did you do to Hubert? _Dimitri shook, his grip on his own head so tight that Sylvain thought he might hurt himself.

"I thought… I thought I could draw that witch out…"

Once Dedue returned, the wound had clotted over enough that Sylvain could run out and fetch Mercedes — it was important that it was Mercedes because Mercedes knew how to tread around Dimitri's tempers, too. Once that was arranged and Dimitri had been coaxed into eating a few bites of cheese and broth and had been set to bed, Sylvain excused himself for the evening, feeling so numb that he scarcely noticed Ashe calling for him in the halls. He walked on. He wasn't finished with his evening yet.

It felt more important than ever that they save Dimitri.

It also felt like there was less and less to save every day.

He climbed the long tower stairs to where their rooms were, thinking about what he could do to change the face of the war. As usual he didn't have many ideas beyond hoping Edelgard would push through Faerghus' borders and take the city, but even that hope seemed dimmer and dimmer by the day. With the church's propaganda and Dimitri's hard-won efforts, the lords of Faerghus were slowly settling into something approaching unity, and it did not seem like many would defect to the Empire's cause. Some even seemed like they would flip entirely, and begin helping to unify Faerghus against the Empire themselves.

Sylvain felt lost. He thumbed at his empty ring finger to remind himself that another letter could come any day now. He would have another chance to write to Edelgard, to offer her everything he knew in hopes that it would give her an opening to seize control. It would be another chance to beg for information from her that he could use to help.

He could ask if Hubert was alright.

He reached the top of the tower and he knocked on Ingrid's door. He heard people inside, but he waited until someone came to open it. Felix peered at him through the crack, and then he opened it wider to let him in. Sylvain closed it behind him. Both of them looked like someone had died. Sylvain's heart sank.

"So he tortured Hubert," Sylvain said, voice low. "Is he okay?"

Ingrid nodded. Felix shook his head, but Sylvain knew why. For a moment all three were silent.

"Well, I guess if you were going to torture anyone on the Eagles, Hubert would be the one to pick," Sylvain said, knowing in full that what he was saying wasn't funny at all. "He probably enjoyed it, at least a little."

"You're not wrong," Ingrid said. "But I don't think he'll be laughing nursing those wounds. He was lucky to escape with his life."

"He stabbed Dimitri," Sylvain said.

"Did he?" Ingrid replied.

"Yeah, I found the wound. Must've been that little knife he keeps. Just a—" He made a gesture like popping a blade in his own thigh. "Something desperate."

Ingrid grimaced. Sylvain knew he was right.

"Dimitri wasn't going to withdraw even after that, though," Ingrid said. "I dragged him off."

"Saving Hubert's life," Felix remarked. "Not exactly a good look, considering the profile we're trying to keep."

Ingrid sank down to sit on her bed. She covered her face with her hands for a moment, and then she seemed to lose whatever she might have said in her own defense. There was no defense. Sylvain crossed the room to her, sitting down at her side. He wrapped an arm around her, and she sat a little stronger when braced.

"I don't regret it," she said, firmly. "I could never regret it. But I also can't bring myself to apologize to Dimitri, or explain myself in any way but the truth."

When it rained, it poured. Sylvain raised his eyebrows. He caught Felix's eye, and he knew Felix understood exactly what he was thinking.

"It's an incredibly stupid idea," Felix said, carefully. "But I feel tempted to do it myself."

Sylvain frowned.

"You're not going to walk out of this castle alive if you do that, Ingrid," Sylvain said, carefully. His throat felt dry. "I don't think you'd make it out of the castle, let alone across enemy lines." What direction, exactly, did the enemy's line run in?

"We aren't going to be able to achieve what we came here to do," Ingrid said, equally careful. She looked up at him from her place in the crook of his shoulder, and her eyes were so forlorn that he didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry if you think we still can. But I think for me, I have to go. I can fight for Dimitri here or I can fight for Dimitri there, but when I'm here…"

She trailed.

"Sylvain," she said, "I came too close today. I could never live with myself if I had to cut down my own allies just to preserve this farce. What if next time it was Bernadetta? Or Dorothea? Or Annette?"

Sylvain nodded.

"I understand," he said, "but—"

"But no," Ingrid said. "I can't."

Sylvain sighed and gathered her closer in his arms. She hugged him, and he gave in all pretence of reservation and pulled her right into his lap. She did not protest, swallowed up by his arms, her face tucked into his collarbone. Felix watched them with a polite disinterest. They had already come to this same conclusion without him, he knew. He didn't like it in the slightest, but he couldn't disagree.

Sylvain ran a hand over the back of her hair, smoothing it down. He felt every breath she took, and he thought of how strong she was, and how the fibre of her being was built around a core far more resilient than any he'd ever known. She was right. He couldn't begrudge her for taking a risk.

If it came to it, he would take that fall for any of them.

"Okay," he said, finally, into her hair. She sighed, long and relieved. "Let's plan how we get you out of here."

Sylvain did not like the plan.

That was fine. Liking the plan was never a requirement for it to be a good plan, or a just plan, or a plan that made people feel righteous. Liking the plan did not make it any better, nor any more likely to succeed. He knew that he did not like the plan solely because it was too sudden.

He thought there was no sense in Ingrid packing her things and leaving for "Galatea" tonight. There was no emergency, no courier delivering some news about her father or siblings, no cause to up and leave in the middle of the night. Sylvain thought she should wait. Given some time, perhaps a week or two, they could arrange some sort of reason for her to head back to Galatea, and actually go there, and then bank right before reaching her family's home and instead take the route south towards the border. If she could ride that channel down to Garreg Mach, she'd be safely delivered into Edelgard's arms, a hero of the revolution, a proud Black Eagle once more.

The problem was that Ingrid was not a proud Black Eagle. She was a proud Blue Lion, and that was exactly why she had to go immediately. She approached it as though remaining under the roof of injustice would destroy her overnight.

With a heavy heart and a lot of dread, Sylvain roamed the castle, sweet-talking provisions out of the kitchen girls, pilfering travel supplies from the storerooms, and chatting up guards to see what their plans for the evening were. He dropped his collection off at their meeting stall in the stables for Ingrid to pack. While he did that, Felix spoke with Duke Fraldarius, setting up some argument about whether Dimitri was fit to be on the battlefield. With attention on Dimitri and the whispers that he'd tortured an enemy general, people would save their questions for Ingrid's intervention for another day.

That was all they could do to help. To be caught with any deeper involvement would have thrown everything else aside, too, and Sylvain was determined to keep their risk low. It would increase Ingrid's odds of escaping, and it would ensure that least he or Felix could remain to look after Dimitri.

When he dropped the last round of supplies off in the stall, he spotted Ingrid down the aisle of the stables. He was surprised to see she wasn't dressed innocuously for travel; she had a lance on her back and she was swathed in a great blue cloak, and as she drew closer, he realized it wasn't a cloak at all.

It was a cape of Faerghus, draped around her shoulder.

His stomach twisted gently.

"What's this?" he asked, thumbing at it.

She ignored him. She leaned up on her toes to kiss his cheeks, one and then the other. He caught her wrists before she could move away, forcing her to stay close, and he gave her a pointed look. _Answer the question._

"This is my defection," she told him. "I want them to know I'm loyal to my Kingdom, that I'm doing this for Faerghus."

She pulled away, and he pulled her right back.

"You couldn't just leave a letter?"

"I did," she said. "Just in case. Please, Sylvain. It's time to say goodbye. Go. You can't be seen with me."

Just in case she was shot down before she could make some grand statement? Sylvain let her go, but he lingered close, and so did she.

"You know, it was funny," she said, gently. "When I said goodbye to Felix, he acted annoyed with me. But I could tell he was upset. You'll keep him company tonight, right? He'll need it."

"Of course," he said. He sighed and cupped her face in his palm. "Stay safe, please. And listen, this time next week, I want to look at the horizon and see you leading her army, you hear? Come back and liberate us."

Ingrid sighed, but it was with such good humour and Sylvain could only smile. She pulled his palm from her cheek and fixed him with a stern look.

"I think it'll take a little longer than a week," she said, sensibly. She gave him a brief look-over and her voice grew a little more sober. "Hang in there, okay? This past year, you've really grown up a lot, especially with everything with your family. Take care of yourself as much as you take care of the boys."

"Of course," he promised.

She smiled at him one last time and then she turned to go. Sylvain lingered a moment longer, just long enough to watch her pick up the satchel of supplies out of the stall and haul them to where her pegasus was stabled. She tacked up her mount with practiced fingers. Sylvain hoped she wouldn't be too cold, as it was raining heavily out. It would reduce visibility and help her escape undetected, but he didn't want her to freeze, either.

Eventually, he had to tear his gaze from her and go.

Sylvain found Felix in his room. Sylvain's room, that is. Felix sat by that miserable narrow slit that made up the "window" and gazed out it, even though he surely couldn't see even a foot or two into the darkness below. Just raindrops falling in sheets, illuminated only by what light could seep out around Felix and out that narrow window. 

Felix turned when he heard the door-latch click closed.

"Are you alright?" Sylvain asked. It had been a while since Felix had last crept into his room, but he supposed it had been an unusual day. He eased himself down to sit next to Felix on the floor.

For a moment, Felix didn't say anything. Sylvain leant up against the wall. He didn't know why they didn't just sit on the bed or something, but he supposed it was nice to imagine watching Ingrid fly off into the abyss.

"I'm not looking forward to besmirching her name tomorrow," Felix remarked. "We'll have to discredit her as a traitor. It'll be the truth, but we'll have to make it sound nastier… less honourable. What a joke."

Sylvain just hummed an agreement. There wasn't anything more to be said about that. They sat wordlessly for a bit, shoulder to shoulder, the soft hum of the rain consuming the silence. Sylvain didn't know what to say to make any of it better. It wouldn't be better.

"How'd your talk with your father go?" he asked, finally.

"Poorly, as usual," Felix replied. "But he sees my point. As useful as it's been having Dimitri race around Faerghus bringing the lords to heel, every moment he's gone, the Archbishop makes more executive decisions in his absence. He's shoring up a Faerghus for her, not us—"

"I know," Sylvain said, gently.

"I know you know," Felix said, tersely. "I'm just saying. Torture isn't the problem. I've known for a long time he'd go from threatening his enemies to acting upon them. The problem is that we're fighting for a kingdom that cares more about its image as united than what it actually unites under."

"I know," Sylvain repeated, and he pushed himself to his feet to pace. His boots sounded much too loud on the wooden floors, and he thought he'd rather listen for sounds of conflict outside, if it could even reach them. He pulled his boots off and sprawled in bed, settling on his back. _Ugh_, he thought. The bed-ropes were loose again, and he hadn't even had the pleasure of doing it deliberately. It was much nicer to think he'd had the time and energy to be bringing back dates, rather than just him tossing and turning.

He let out a long exhale.

The situation felt bleak.

"Want to sleep over?" Sylvain asked.

"Sure," Felix said.

Felix got up too, shucking off his boots and crawling into bed with him. It was not a very wide bed, and Sylvain knew one of them would give up and sleep on the floor at some point, but for now, Sylvain shifted over as far as he could without falling off, and Felix stretched out by his side.

Silence reigned.

Sylvain knew that somewhere several floors below them, Dimitri was still awake, prowling the halls of the castle on his bandaged leg, oblivious to who he had just driven from his life. Sylvain didn't want to think too much about it, but he let his hand drift to Felix's, and it surprised him a little when Felix closed his grip in turn. Their eyes met, briefly, and Sylvain gave Felix a steady smile. He hoped it was comforting. It must have been. Felix rolled in towards him, eyes screwed shut. Sylvain held him. It felt like being little kids again, but also like something else. In broad daylight, Sylvain might have felt embarrassed about it, and Felix never would be so tender, but here, there was just something about feeling each other breathe.

He wondered, as he drifted off to sleep, when Felix would go, too.

While Sylvain and Felix talked, an unexpected scene played out. Ingrid did not flee the castle walls and beeline for open skies. After mounting her pegasus in the courtyard, she knotted the Holy Kingdom's flag to the shaft of her lance, ignoring the curious eyes of the knights. Once satisfied with the tie, she held it aloft and took to the rainy skies, shivering against the cold that clawed into her bones.

From above, she must have pondered the future.

As Sylvain and Felix settled into bed, their hands tightly wound together, Ingrid circled the castle, shoring up her courage and preparing for a near inevitable death; a knightly death, an honourable one, committed in service to the ideals she had so carefully hidden for the past year. Like horses, pegasus were acutely tuned to their riders' nerves; the beast must have tossed its head and jerked the bit and itched to strike.

And as Sylvain and Felix drifted off to sleep, Ingrid let her pegasus charge. She kept her weight on the stirrups as they shot down, timing herself on approach. Fifty feet away, she raised her lance behind her. Twenty feet, she braced. Ten, and she tucked her chin to protect her eyes.

Zero, and her pegasus plunged her through the glass doors of Rhea's balcony. Glass shattered against its horned helmet, and in a shower of shards, Ingrid breathed one last breath in preparation, and flung her lance forward.

She missed, but only just.

In the bedroom that had belonged to a dozen kings going back to Loog himself, Ingrid faced off against the Archbishop, seeking a swift end to the war. Perhaps she knew that Rhea would not transform into the Immaculate One in the middle of Fhirdiad, confirming Edelgard's claim that the church's humanity was no more than a veneer, but she could not give up the chance, no matter how slim. She was outmatched, certainly, against a dragon-woman with a natural affinity to war. Perhaps she did not plan to survive her encounter, but when it was made clear to her that Rhea would not go down so easily, she reeled her pegasus around. The pegasus and rider dashed back through the doors and took the sky once more, Rhea's guttural screams of anger ringing out.

As the alarms sounded, Ingrid rose in the saddle and unfurled the flag. As it streamed around her, the rain torrenting down, she looked back and shouted for all to hear:

"I declare my allegiance to Faerghus! Long live the Kingdom! May justice prevail!”

Or so Sylvain imagined the scene, anyhow. He never awoke to any screams or alarms or ringing bells. He was fast asleep through it all, Felix dozing against his shoulder, all the world drowned out by the rain. All he knew ws what he was told about, come morning.

It was easy to feign obliviousness and shock; after all, Ingrid had not warned him of anything of that sort, and he was glad for it. He might have stopped her if she had. He might have given away his own allegiances when questioned, too. And Felix, for his part, remained stony-faced. If he had known, he didn't say anything to Sylvain, but no one could question Felix's reaction when he always scoffed at everything.

Still, sitting in the dining hall, and surrounded by talk about traitors and defectors in their midst, Sylvain distinctly wished she hadn't. Dimitri had apparently passed out in the corridor to the dungeons in the small hours of the morning, and he was still sleeping then — Sylvain dreaded his waking, knowing that the news of Ingrid's declaration and betrayal would trigger another meltdown. Dimitri didn't have much trust left to shatter, and now Ingrid had plunged her mount through what remained.

Felix looked at him across the breakfast table. The news had robbed him of any rest, and his skin was pale, his eyes gaunt. Sylvain was certain he didn't look any better, his hair merely finger-combed into the right directions, his face unwashed.

"Well," Felix said. "What now?"

"We probably have time to spar before the next war meeting," Sylvain replied, dropping his gaze to his porridge. "Then I think I'm going to spend some time with Dimitri."

The corner of Felix's mouth curled up in a grimace, and then Felix put his face in his hands and didn't make a sound.


	29. The Dagger and the Pen

It was a strange sight to see Dimitri’s door again.

The bricks had almost all been removed, save for a stubborn halo around the frame that did not impede passage through the door itself. Sylvain looked up at it from the base of the stairs, and his heart pounded. He glanced aside at Ingrid. She was looking up at it too. And then, with a deep breath, she asked him: “Well?”

“You coming with me?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ingrid replied. “I'll spare a bit of time. I'm curious too.”

Sylvain thought his relief might be best kept a secret for the sake of his pride as a man, but he was sure it was visible on his face regardless. He squeezed her shoulder and nodded.

“Much appreciated,” Sylvain said, starting up the stairs. Ingrid followed. Sylvain met the door at the top and took the handle. He glanced back at her, swallowed his breath, and turned.

It stopped short as it hit the lock. Sylvain froze, just his eyes swivelling to the keyhole. It was locked? Where was the key? It hadn't even occured to him that it would be locked. Who the hell bothered locking a door that was about to get bricked up, anyway?

“Let’s just bust it,” Ingrid said. She said it so sensibly that Sylvain nearly guffawed.

“Bust it?” Sylvain repeated. “You, Ingrid Brandl Galatea, want to break down a door?”

“It’s faster,” Ingrid replied, but of course she did. If there was a single woman in the world who desired to kick down a door, it was her. She nudged him to move and lined herself up with the handle. Sylvain felt like laughing but he said nothing. She tilted her hip, raised a foot to line up a hard kick with the place just under the doorknob, and she struck out at it. There was a tremendous crack and the door wobbled, but it didn’t move. She lined up to try again. Sylvain reached to stop her, a hand on her knee, and she gave him a sharp look. "What?"

He pointed at the hinges.

Ingrid looked up at them, too, and she sighed. It opened out.

"We're so stupid," he chuckled. Sylvain could tell she felt a little foolish, but the flush that spread on her cheeks felt good. Terrifying, of course, because maybe she didn't want to be teased, but good.

“Okay, have your laugh, then go get an axe.”

He didn't have to laugh when he had that prospect at hand.

“Are you giving me permission to take an axe to the door?”

"It's ruined from all the lime anyway," she said.

Ingrid gave him a little push, and Sylvain went back down the stairs. He jogged until he found the nearest knight with an axe and he asked for it, but the knight refused him. His turn to be embarrassed, he supposed, but he went back to the stairs and called for Ingrid. Ingrid called down for the axe, and the knight put it in Sylvain’s waiting hands. When he rejoined Ingrid, she stepped back and gestured for him to go ahead.

"You sure you don't want to—? No? Don't mind if I do, then."

Sylvain lined it up with the handle, spaced his hands properly, and then brought the axe down. It broke through the door with a satisfying sound, leaving a great split in one of the inlaid inner panels. Sylvain withdrew and shifted the axe to one hand to see if he could reach the lock with the other, but the crack in the door wasn’t quite wide enough for him to reach even to his elbow. He stepped back to take another shot at it, and with one more swing, he broke the crack a little wider. He squeezed his arm in, feeling the splintered wood dig at him through his shirt. Ingrid shifted closer, but before she could offer to do it, he managed to get his finger on the lock and turn it.

That was it. The door was open. Everything he'd been waiting for in the past few months — there. _Happening._

It was funny. Sylvain had last been in that room just a month before it was sealed up, so it surely had no opportunity to change, but it still surprised him to see it just the same.

Sylvain felt as thought his vision were doubled, seeing it all again. There was the short-posted bed with the carved headboard that Sylvain had slept in himself many times; their childhood lot had often shared this bed when permitted to have a sleep-over, and Sylvain had spent the night there a few times as an adult when he, Dimitri and Dedue had stayed up late talking or drinking. He saw a young Dimitri fussing when Sylvain jumped on the bed, loosening all the bedropes. He saw a bedspread made up with musty furs that hadn’t warmed a body in five years, and sheets that were still relatively new, scarcely slept in even when Dimitri was still alive. He saw Dimitri sobbing at the window as a little boy, and then sobbing as a man — maybe still a boy, then, too.

Sylvain walked a couple steps in. Ingrid followed, curiously. Sylvain felt her fingertips brush the inside of his elbow, but he couldn't bring himself to look at her.

The air was stale, but little was dusty, having no people traipsing through it to stir it up. The tapestries were faded where no one had drawn the drapes, and the expensive beeswax candles were misshapen. The mirror was no more broken than when Sylvain had last seen it, which was to say it still had a fist-sized fissure in the centre that rippled outward, barely obscured by a cloth that had been laid over it. He had the overwhelming memory of lining Ingrid, Dimitri and Felix up in front of it when they were all small, all of them shorter than him by a whole head, and conducting them in the art of making stupid faces. _Pull your eyelids down this way. Puff your cheeks out like a chipmunk. Make a silly grin, look cross-eyed._ The three of them were too young to know about dignity, much less care, screaming out giggles and trying to one-up each other.

There were a lot of memories like that. Nobody could put a fist through those.

But what stung Sylvain’s heart most was seeing Dimitri’s nightshirt draped over the back of a chair, laid there as if someone was supposed to be returning to it some night. It was a little moth-eaten now, but the linen hardly even slouched. He crossed the room and picked it up.

Had Dimitri known he would never be returning to it? Surely, he must have. Edelgard had conquered almost everything south of Fhirdiad at that point, and even if Dimitri had retreated from the Tailtean plans, he likely would have lost just the same. And if he’d retreated, giving up the seat of his power, then what? Would he have commanded a resistance from Fraldarius, backed up by Margrave Gautier, the last outpost of the former Kingdom of Faerghus? Would he have fallen back to Gautier and then died with his back against the mountains at the northernmost tip of Fódlan?

Would Sylvain had stayed with him?

Sylvain set the shirt down again.

“I knew he was getting violent,” Ingrid said, quietly. “But…”

Sylvain looked at her. She bit her lower lip and gestured at the dresser. Five human skulls were lined up in a row, as neatly as one might lay out a prized collection, each laid on a cloth in Empire red. Sylvain grimaced.

“Yeah,” he said, a little tersely. “That... was a thing he started doing.”

“When? Why? _Who?_” Ingrid asked. Her voice dipped low into concern, and her fingers pressed a little harder into the crook of his elbow. “You never told me that he was doing… _that.”_

Sylvain shrugged.

“What can I say?” he said. There were a lot of things he hadn't told anyone. “The guy didn’t need me spilling all the details and making him look worse than he already was.”

Both of them knew there was plenty to argue about on that front, but she didn’t seem to know whether it was worth it. She grimaced and drifted from his side, moving deeper into the room. She had been in Fhirdiad for quite some time after the war, and had no doubt wondered about its contents at least once or twice — how was it, he wondered, to know that she had been a brick wall and a door away from Dimitri’s skull collection? How was it to have that pain so close to her?

“Well,” she said, tentatively. “How do we want to do this?”

“You start with the writing desk,” Sylvain suggested. “Go through all the paperwork and see if there’s anything worth keeping... or anything you want to know from the horse’s mouth. I’ll comb though the rest of it. Keep any nasty surprises for myself.” He gestured vaguely at the skulls and shook his head. There were nasty surprises waiting for Ingrid in the papers, too, but at least they weren't tangible.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Sylvain said.

Ingrid nodded and went to Dimitri’s writing desk. The chair creaked when she pulled it out, and she sat gingerly and started going through the drawers. Dimitri kept a ludicrous amount of paperwork, meticulously filed but in no identifiable order. Sylvain didn’t truly know what they were about because Dimitri did not like to share, but he’d maintained two active theories: one, that they were the disjointed ravings of a madman, and two, that Dimitri was preparing to give up his crown to pursue a career as a novelist. It didn’t really matter if either theory was true, as Sylvain assumed none of the contents were grounded in reality.

For Sylvain’s part, he had to comb through two trunks, one chest of drawers, and a wardrobe. If the dagger wasn’t anywhere in there, then he wasn’t sure where it would be.

He sat down on the floor by the trunk at the foot of the bed. It was unlocked, fortunately, so he popped it open, the old hinges creaking. Extra blankets for the bed were laid across the top, and Sylvain pulled them aside and to the floor. A couple dead moths fell out. Underneath that were a few feather pillows, a small rolled-up carpet, a number of silver bowls and a matching washbasin, and a winter cloak that looked fairly new, although it hadn’t fared well by the moths, either. No dagger. Sylvain took his time to inventory it all, just to be sure nothing was rolled up inside the carpet or in the blankets. He contemplated taking the coat for himself and then put it back after seeing the stains. He moved on to the other trunk.

The other trunk was a trousseau, which Sylvain could tell before he even opened it just because of how the wood smelled. Just about every young noble had one — it was a collection of things for a future marriage, usually full of things for one’s partner, rather than oneself, in hopes of enticing a better match. There had been one for Sylvain's future wife somewhere back in Gautier, and his mother had filled it with nice things and family heirlooms like embroidered handkerchiefs and fur accessories. Sylvain had always thought that Dimitri could give any woman in the world an empty box and still walk away with a bride, but he supposed everyone had carried hopes for him at one point, and a future queen still needed to be spoiled. Maybe Dimitri's mother had put it together before her death, or his stepmother before her own. Maybe King Lambert had put in some effort, too. Sylvain didn’t know. He probably never would.

He opened the lid with some curiosity anyway. The contents were stored with a fair bit more care than the other trunks, with paper wrappings and dried flowers, and Sylvain imagined they had not been looked at even longer than the other chest, perhaps since Dimitri was small. Still, he rifled through it just in case, counting velvet dresses and skeins of lace, and delicate embroidered veils and nightdresses with blackwork stitching. There was a set of ladies' toiletries with a hand mirror and a few gold combs, and some small bits of jewelry. No dagger, but Sylvain supposed Edelgard might take a nice comb as a consolation prize. He pocketed one, and then pulled out the last item — yet another nightdress, this one with blue embroidery.

“You need a new nightdress, Ingrid?” Sylvain asked.

Ingrid didn’t reply. He found her engrossed in reading one of Dimitri’s notebooks, her eyes scanning back and forth rapidly, her lips parted slightly. Her expression was difficult to decipher. Sylvain cleared his throat, and finally she looked up.

“Sorry?”

He held up the nightdress.

“Not really my style, is it?” Ingrid replied, but her voice dipped sentimental. A little sad. She leant an arm against the back of the chair. “Who would have worn that, I wonder?”

Sylvain knew the answer, but he didn’t particularly feel like engaging in that kind of depressing catch-up; visiting Mercedes and Dedue had been enough for him. He folded up the nightdress again — it was probably the first time Sylvain had ever attempted to fold such a thing so his best efforts were largely in vain — and he put it back in a heap.

He joked: “I’d look good in it. Lots of leg.”

Ingrid shook her head, a tight smile on her lips, and she went back to her reading. Sylvain closed the trunk. He moved on to the chest of drawers next, and he found it more of the same — the most personal pieces remaining belonged to a child who had been gone for a long time, and it was a strange feeling to root through wooden carved toys and playing cards and such to no avail. Only a particular kind of person gave up on personal effects, and that was because Dimitri had ceased to have hobbies after his father died.

Hobbies beyond killing people, anyway. Sylvain didn't think that counted much as a hobby.

Another drawer had some small books, and another had some spare writing utensils and some handkerchiefs and assorted little wooden boxes, one of which contained an earring that had belonged to Dedue. The last was full of underwear. Sylvain picked through it like it might bite him.

Sylvain sighed. He only had the wardrobe left and his hope was fading, as he did not expect to find a dagger in a wardrobe. He opened the double doors anyway and took note of the furs and cloaks and tunics hung there, and the trousers folded in drawers. He rifled through pockets and inside sleeves, feeling to see if there were hidden pockets inside, but once more, he came out empty handed of any dagger. He did find the occasional coin and a bent fork, but nothing of significance. The drawers of the bottom half of the wardrobe yielded mostly stockings, gloves and belts.

And then he saw a box.

It was a decent sized box — perhaps too large for a dagger, but certainly not something he expected to see in the wardrobe. Sylvain crouched down to pry it out of the narrow spot it was wedged into at the very back of the wardrobe, and he brought it over to the bed to open it. He sat down and lifted the lid and found himself looking at... well, not a dagger.

Sylvain laughed, prompting Ingrid to look over.

“What is it?” she asked.

"The dancer outfit he won," he said.

Sylvain pulled it out. A piece, a heavy metal buckle or something, fell off and clanged loudly off the floor and rolled away under the bed, but Sylvain just held up the remainder of it. It was embellished with dangling beads and braided silver threads, and vivid blue silk sashes were twined around it. It was probably the shiniest thing this side of Faerghus' border.

“I don’t think I ever saw him wear that,” Ingrid remarked.

“Of course he didn’t,” Sylvain said. “It’d be mortifying. I heard he barely made it through the competition in his officer uniform.”

Sometimes Sylvain thought about his own brush with being a dancer, and while it wasn’t generally something he thought of with _regret_, he didn’t like to see an opportunity slip by him twice. He shucked off his coat and started unbuttoning his tunic, and Ingrid averted her eyes.

“What are you _doing?_” It sounded like a scold.

“What does it look like?” he replied, tossing his tunic aside. It was a bit chilly to be wearing that scanty dancer outfit, but it would be funny. Sylvain kicked off his boots next. Ingrid turned her back entirely, going back to the documents.

“You’re such a child,” Ingrid said.

Sylvain shrugged that off and stripped down to nothing but his braies. He wasn’t going to wear another man’s knit shorts so he tried the shirt first, but it didn’t even remotely fit over his shoulders. The curse of trying on something that had belonged to seventeen-year-old Dimitri, he supposed, so Sylvain ended up scrapping that too. Not to be deterred, he swathed himself in the various belted tabards and sashes, and he coaxed the metal armbands as high on his arms as they’d go. He didn’t know the order in which to put it on, but he made a pretty good guess of it, and before long he was standing in Dimitri's childhood bedroom, dressed like a shiny fool.

“Look,” he implored, adjusting the waistband a little lower on his belly, where it wouldn't ride as much.

“No, thanks.”

“Aww, humour me for one minute,” Sylvain said. “This was the last box. No dagger. Might as well get a laugh out of it.”

Ingrid turned very carefully. She was quiet for a moment, glancing over him with a very tight smile on her face. Sylvain could tell she was trying very hard to keep it together, so to make it a little trickier for her, he did a pose that must have looked about as stupid as it felt, and she snorted.

“Terrible,” she said. “Actually terrible. Isn't there supposed to be a shirt?”

“It doesn’t fit.”

“No,” she replied. She gestured vaguely at him. “None of it fits. You're bulging out. You'd just distract people on the battlefield.”

“Maybe that's the point,” Sylvain teased, trying another pose.

"_Sylvain_," she said, but it sounded a whole lot liked _I missed you_ to Sylvain's ears. She shook her head and smiled, eyes closed, and she turned back to the documents.

Sylvain just laughed, and then remembered the piece that had fallen. He crouched down, mindful of his odd skirts. He was not exactly dressed to be crawling around on the floor, so he did his best to grope around under the bed just by crouching, but eventually he gave up and bent down on his hands and knees to look. He spied the piece, but he also spied a carved wooden box.

A-ha.

He swiped out the fallen buckle and replaced it on the bed. He couldn’t quite reach the box without crawling partway under the bed frame, though, so he had to lower himself to the stone floor entirely. He eased himself under, shivering where the cold stone touched his largely-exposed chest, and he fumbled to get a hand on it.

“What are you doing?”

“I found another box,” he called.

"Hold on,” Ingrid said, and she walked towards him. She took a hold of the bed-frame — Sylvain felt it shift over his head, and with a bracing grunt she lifted the end off the ground. He immediately had more space to crawl, and he got a hand around the back end of the box and pulled it towards him. The bottom scraped loudly against the floor. Ingrid waited for him to be clear and then set it down again.

Sylvain set the box down on the bed and sat next to it. Ingrid joined him, and Sylvain opened the lid.

And there it was, laid out on a pile of envelopes. The dagger. It was a long but slight thing. In a child’s hands it must have seemed enormous.

Sylvain let out a low whistle. He was certain this was it. He didn’t want to tell Ingrid where he had seen it before because then he would have to admit to having spent so many hours stealing glances at Edelgard’s beltline, but he was certain it was the same one that had dutifully hung there for their months at Garreg Mach. Fortunately, Ingrid didn’t ask. She just gazed down at it.

“All this way, for a dagger,” she remarked.

“Must be special,” Sylvain said. He picked it up and unsheathed it. It was clean. He sheathed it again. He glanced down into the box. There were more letters, most of them sealed, and Sylvain picked up the first one and turned it over to see if they were addressed. They were.

To Edelgard.

An odd stone formed in his belly. Ingrid looked no more comfortable than he felt. He ruffled them with his fingers until he landed on one that was unsealed.

“We should probably just burn those,” Ingrid remarked.

“No,” Sylvain disagreed. “I’ll take them back to Edelgard.”

“If she wants closure, I don’t think it’ll come in the form of Dimitri himself telling her how deep his hatred for her ran,” Ingrid replied. She fixed him with a firm look. “How would you feel if someone brought you a box of hateful letters, all of them detailing how gruesome your death would be at their hands?”

Sylvain didn’t think _depends on who it was from_ was a good answer, but Ingrid was waiting on one, so he just replied: “I guess it’d be my choice whether to read them or not, not the messenger’s.”

Ingrid paused. While she thought about it, Sylvain pulled out the open letter and flipped it open.

“Fair,” she relented. She mulled something over for a moment.

Sylvain read:

_ Edelgard. Do you remember when we sparred that night, and you asked me if I would side with you? I think you knew the truth I have been looking for. My heart begs that I understand what you were thinking and why you've done this, and why you hate us so. I want to understand so I can sever your head from your neck with a clear conscience, or so that I die at your hands with some understanding._

Ingrid reached over and pushed the letter over so he couldn't read it anymore. She grimaced, having evidently read it, too.

“When he got like that, it was so hard to listen to. And when he turned on me, it was awful... I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if he ever had the chance to lay into her that way, off the battlefield.”

Sylvain didn’t know if it really would have been, at least as far as Edelgard's hurt went. Sylvain was a man who had quite literally tried to kill her on one occasion, and fought her several other times with various degrees of seriousness. It had never occurred to him that Edelgard resented him for it, and maybe that had contributed to his ability to walk into her palace and see her again so many times in his life without either of them thinking much about how their previous meetings had come to blows. He didn't think Edelgard would care. She was oddly immune to grudges.

Then again, he realized, until recently he hadn't ever known her to _express_ being bothered by such things. Maybe it had bothered her for all those years, and he'd just assumed it was fine because she continued to associate with him regardless. Sylvain supposed that even if it did bother her, he still didn’t even approach the level of violence that Dimitri wished upon her every day for five years and change.

_Sever your head from your neck—_ how many times had he heard that?

"Yeah…" Sylvain trailed. "We stopped talking about you and Felix for a while. I couldn't listen to it."

"What did you talk about, then?"

Sylvain shrugged helplessly. There was another long pause between them. Ingrid frowned, and she reached to him gingerly, resting a hand on his bare knee.

"You can say no if you want," she said, carefully, "but… we never _really_ talked about what went on with you and Dimitri in those last couple years."

Sylvain froze. He wished she hadn't said that, not because he _couldn't_ talk about Dimitri in bits and pieces, but because the whole concept felt that much more daunting when she laid it out like that. Where did he start? How did he summarize what had happened over the course of years, particularly when it felt like background noise to the war raging around them? It wasn't even terrible, in his mind. It had just happened the same way a lot of things in his life had happened.

He grimaced.

"It's not that I'm not ready," Sylvain said, finally. "I'm fine. I just can't summarize what we talked about for years any more than I can summarize what you and I have talked about for years. Or Felix and I. I just… I don't know what you're asking." He shrugged and gestured at the skulls. "Do you want to know who they were? 'Cause I can't tell which is which, but I do know."

Ingrid pursed her lips.

"No," Ingrid said. "I mean, how Dimitri treated _you. _Why you stayed."

"He had it far worse than I did. _Far_."

"Sylvain—"

"I'm being honest," Sylvain added.

"I know," Ingrid said. "Just… that whole thing where you smile and joke around and pretend everything is fine when something really isn't. It feels like you're doing it again right now. Look at you."

Sylvain wasn't sure, but whatever vague smile that had been on his face certainly vanished at that. He wished she hadn't said that, either, because no, it wasn't fine. With the dagger in his hand, the mission was at least partly over. Felix would be gone until spring, if Sylvain was even still in Fhirdiad himself, or if he was even coming back at this point. He had a long road to healing his friendship with Ingrid. Dimitri was dead. He didn't know what he wanted to make of his life, other than make it a good one. A positive one. One he _wanted._

"I think that's just who I am," he said, carefully. "Nothing is fine, but I'm still going to have a laugh when I can."

"I know," Ingrid repeated, tersely. She squeezed his knee. Her fingers were warm, her grip firm. "And I know in the past I have sometimes reacted unfairly to the truth, but I still want you to be honest with me. I hope you feel you can be."

Sylvain grimaced. Understatement, but he had long-since forgiven her for any of that. He could forgive pretty much anyone of anything, as it seemed unfair to hold anyone to the nasty standard he held himself to. It didn't improve his lot in life, anyway.

"Sure," he said. "Thank you."

Both fell silent. For a moment they sat, each holding the remainders of Dimitri and Edelgard's relationship and stewing in what was left of their own. Sylvain wished he could just drip his memories into her, in slow, steady mouthfuls, and not have to go through the process of figuring out what would hurt her too badly. It felt frustrating to know that the wrong choice in words or the wrong expression could upset her in a way that he couldn't help. Same with Felix, really.

"Anyway," Sylvain said, a little more flippantly. "It's so cold that I'm pretty sure my nipples could score glass, and I don't want to have this conversation dressed like a whore."

Ingrid put her face in her hands, and Sylvain thought she might cry, so he reached to put a hand on her back. He felt her tremble, and then she burst out laughing. It was helplessly loud, no matter how much she tried to hold herself back, and all Sylvain could do was hold her until she composed herself enough to let him wipe the tears from her eyes with one of his costume's silk sashes.

Fully dressed and composed, they gathered up Dimitri's papers into two crates and took them downstairs, feeling it pointless to convene in Dimitri's room when they could instead do so in front of a fireplace that hadn’t been nested in by rodents for five years. Sylvain carried the larger of the crates, his chin lifted so he could vaguely see where he was putting his feet as he descended the stairs. With every step, he felt the sheath of Edelgard and Dimitri's shared dagger weigh heavy against his thigh. He supposed he would have to get used to it. With Felix gone, it was going to be his duty alone to look after it until he could deliver it back to Edelgard safe and sound.

Ingrid glanced back at him on the stairs. She lingered, her own crate resting on the crook of her hip, supervising just in case he might miss a step and fall. He didn't, but he appreciated it just the same.

He was glad, too, that with Felix gone, he and Ingrid had bridged their chasm just enough to feel like he wasn't alone. Even if it was rickety and required a great deal of care, that bridge felt like the only reason he wasn't wandering in and out of taverns and brothels in the city, or guzzling ale as fast as he could afford it. It felt nice, too, to know that even if things never went back to how they were before, he could at least make something new of his life.

And things would be different. Felix would never be his lover again, but he could be a different sort of friend, no less dear or special to him. Just different. Fhirdiad would never be the city it had been when Lambert had ruled, that shining dream that Sylvain had seen decline through his youth. It would be a new city, a city reborn from the ashes rather than a city updated like Enbarr, and it gave its people a chance to really decide who they were — who they wanted to be. Dimitri would never again walk these halls, or ruminate on how to best serve his people, or laugh at a tremendously unfunny joke, but there were plenty of people who could build the Faerghus that Dimitri would have loved, if only he had a chance to turn his life around. And Ingrid, lovely, bossy, stern, passionate, _knightly_ Ingrid — Sylvain wanted to be a friend to her that gave and gave and gave, and happily so rather than out of some sort of guilt for the way he and life had trodden on her spirit. And he could be friends with the Eagles, with people he had chosen but not stuck by, with Edelgard…

He could be a good friend.

He thought, too, that maybe he could change in the same way, and be a good friend to _himself._ A force for change in his own life, for the better.

A lot of people went to their graves having never had the chance to do that, and he thought that he should feel a lot more fortunate about his lot in life than he had been before. Some things, he knew, had to be fixable, and he had to do that for Dimitri.

The two of them set up in a cozy drawing room, the same one where Sylvain had eavesdropped on Ingrid and Felix just weeks before. They sat up on the couches with fur blankets pulled around their waists so they could shuck off their boots and their coats, and they began the process of going through all of Dimitri's papers.

Much of it was nothing of any importance. In fact, great swaths of it just seemed to be notes saved from lectures at Garreg Mach, and in perusing them, Sylvain had never felt happier to have been in a class with a professor who didn't care much for the classroom. Dimitri's notes were as dense as Hanneman's lectures, as though he could not prioritize the information and instead settled on merely writing it all. It made him look very studious, certainly, but in glancing over it, Sylvain got the distinct impression that it had never stuck with him. He'd never heard Dimitri talk about any of it, or even apply it — he'd clearly written the notes dutifully while his mind was elsewhere, dreaming of… what? A future he didn't even want?

After the third ream, Sylvain was itching for something a little less dry. He glanced at Ingrid and found her reading with glassy eyes. He reached across the couch and squeezed her. She glanced at him and muttered a thanks.

"He was really hurting," she said.

"Yeah," Sylvain replied, a little helplessly.

She kept reading.

Sylvain thought of his journal upstairs and wondered how it might read if someone were to peruse it. He imagined even just the details of the past few months might have brought some strong reaction, let alone what he'd written during the war. He liked to think that no matter what kind of mess he'd made of his life, he had never tortured someone. He'd never had a desire to kill someone that wasn't a split-second thought that dissipated before he went too far with it. But his journal was still full of ugly thoughts, and even uglier decisions. If anyone were to ever read it, he'd want it to be after his death, too, when the rub of what he'd done had faded.

He did hope, however, that maybe people would understand him a little better. He felt people deserved that in death if they couldn't get it in life. It had been one of his biggest regrets in life that he had watched when the Gautier estate burned whatever Miklan hadn't been able to pack on his horse, back when he was disinherited. There had been a lot of papers there, too, and the fire had consumed them more greedily than the hobby horses and the old clothes and the paintings. Little chunks of them had floated on the smoke before burning out, and just like that, anything Sylvain might have ever known about his brother's inner life was gone.

He wished he hadn't hated Miklan then. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Sylvain sighed. His head hurt. His thoughts were a mess.

"Why was Dimitri so fixated on Lord Arundel?" Ingrid asked.

"Huh?"

"Lord Arundel," Ingrid repeated. "Edelgard's uncle."

Sylvain frowned.

"Uh," he said, "her _uncle?_"

"Yeah," Ingrid said. "You didn't know he was her uncle?"

"No, I knew that, I just didn't…"

Sylvain wasn't sure when he had gotten so deep in the tangled web of his own personal life that something like that had completely skipped either his mind or his memory, but suddenly, there it was — Lord Arundel was Edelgard's uncle, and they'd both been in Fhirdiad. Why had he never questioned that before?

"Why was Lord Arundel at Faerghus' court when we were kids?" Sylvain asked. "What did he _do?_"

Ingrid gave him a helpless shrug. How could they know? They were children. They'd been consumed with the business of being children, completely helpless to the circumstances of their world.

"I just know he was there because of the Insurrection," Ingrid said. "I don't know too much about it, but Dimitri isn't talking about that, or any Empire politics. He's just talking about the dungeons."

"What is with these people and dungeons?" Sylvain asked, and he let out a breath on the cusp of a laugh.

"I know," Ingrid said. She flipped back and forth between a few letters. "He keeps talking about how Lord Arundel had something in the dungeons, but he couldn't figure out what. Something about a water leak? Why he didn't just go down and look?"

Sylvain's stomach turned. He knew exactly what she was talking about, suddenly, and it made him sit up a little straighter.

"He couldn't," Sylvain said. "They were sealed up."

"Rhea sealed the dungeons when we marched on Fhirdiad," Ingrid replied, as if she were correcting him, but her voice grew careful when she met his eyes. Sylvain shook his head.

"The dungeons have been sealed off since long before then."

"What do you mean?" Ingrid implored.

"Rhea never kept prisoners," Sylvain said. Well, except the ones she was still letting creep around at the time, but that was another matter entirely. "That’s the other reason she locked us up in the tower instead. The dungeons were definitely sealed in Lambert's time."

"How do you know?"

Ingrid looked at him with wide eyes. Sylvain felt delighted to actually know something useful.

"Dimitri and I talked about that once," Sylvain explained. "Apparently, just before the Tragedy of Duscur, someone discovered some sort of structural problem down there. Water leaks over the centuries had washed away parts of the foundation, loosened stones, that kind of thing. So they reinforced it with more stone and timber, but it made most of the space down there pretty useless, so they just sealed it up. Dimitri wanted to use it as a dungeon again so Rhea would stop executing people."

Looking at Ingrid's face, he was a little glad that Felix wasn't there right then, actually. Felix might have kicked his ass for not saying that the moment Edelgard asked them about the dungeons. It was enough to have Ingrid throw a blanket at him and demand:

"Why didn't you _say_ that when you and Felix first got here? Why didn't you tell Edelgard?"

"Why bother?" Sylvain asked in turn, pulling the furs off his head. "I figured she had more important things to think about than the floors caving in, and I didn't know this whole thing was that complicated. And to be honest, I kind of thought Hubert was fucking with me."

(He wasn't going to say the part where he was looking forward to going out for a night on the town with Felix and wasn't really interested in standing around listening to Hubert's meaninglessly cryptic bullshit when he could be carousing.)

"You should have just said that in the first place," Ingrid ordered him. "You're telling me that Edelgard sent you to find a dungeon that you _knew_ Dimitri was interested in?"

"I didn't think it was connected," Sylvain repeated. "But now that we know…"

Ingrid put the letter in her lap in favour of rubbing her temples. For a moment they were quiet, listening to the crackle of the fire and the occasional little sigh from either of them. Sylvain wasn't sure what to make of that information. What did any of it mean, anyway? Sylvain mulled it over but came up with nothing. They were missing pieces of the puzzle, and Sylvain was never much of a puzzle guy.

"Is he still alive? Arundel?" Sylvain asked.

"No," Ingrid replied. "He died a couple years ago. I was invited to his funeral. All of us on the Strike Force were."

Sylvain felt a twinge of jealousy but he just nodded. Ingrid picked up the letters she had finished reading and handed them over.

The first line read:

_ Edelgard knows what's in the dungeons under this castle._

"Well, fuck," he muttered. "I guess it's up to us to find out what that's about."


	30. Dark Water

The dungeon posed the same issue as Dimitri's room: getting into it.

To Sylvain's fortune, Ingrid's curiosity had been suitably piqued, and it meant she was much more eager to rally the knights to do something about it. Sylvain even helped over the next few days, clearing out rubble by the bucketload and dumping it into the yard. He ended up thickening the calluses on his fingers for it, and going to bed with an aching back, but it felt good to be doing some sort of work again.

Felix's departure had felt like a wake-up call, too, or some sort of demand he start shaping his own life again. He wanted Felix to come back in the spring and find him a changed man, not for the sake of anything between them, but because he wanted to prove it for himself. He'd lost so many years that the idea of fucking up even once more felt intolerable.

He had a whole life ahead of him, he hoped. Twenty years, maybe thirty, if he got lucky. And if he wasn't with Felix, he would be with his friends, whether that was in Fhirdiad, or in Enbarr, or anywhere between.

So when he wasn't hauling rubble, he shadowed Ingrid on her patrols, and when she declined his "assistance", he hung out with Linhardt, who tolerated him as long as he was relatively quiet. In those long hours in the library, he read the old knight tales and wrote in his journal, and when the silence or Linhardt's snoring got to him, he went out into the courtyard and trained by his lonesome. He reasoned that even if he had no plans to be a soldier or a Margrave ever again, he had to be doing something. Anything.

He swore that next time he saw Felix, he would be someone worth staying for.

On a cold morning half a week later, Sylvain rose at dawn and bundled himself up and headed out into the courtyard with a borrowed lance. It was Ingrid's and so it was foot too short for him, but it was well-maintained and that served him just as well. He walked with it tucked under his arm, the point just inches above the floor.

Winter was creeping towards its deepest point. It was generally too cold to even snow. Sylvain felt the shock of cold air on his face as he set out, and his gloves were much too thin to keep his fingers properly warm, but if they were any thicker he would have fumbled his lance too much. He would adapt to the temperature, as he did every year. His boots crunched through the iced-over slush that a hundred other boots had tromped around in, and he took up a spot right in the middle.

Sylvain spaced the lance between his hands, adjusted his stance into a gentle lunge, and he shifted his weight forward into a thrust. He held it for a moment then withdrew. It was a good stretch in his thighs. He adjusted his stance and did it again, and then again, and then again. He pivoted on his back foot, practiced his footwork strides forward and back, and then resumed the thrusts until his grip felt steady, and his speed comfortable.

Sylvain felt his fingers growing numb already, so he switched to spinning the lance, turning it between his hands and practicing maneuvering it from side to side. He passed it behind his back, twisted it over his head. He had to remember to keep his back straight, and his head high. He had to trust that his body remembered what to—

He winced and muttered an "ow!" as he slammed himself in the back of the head. He was glad it wasn't the blade, but it was a solid enough whack to drop the lance and have to reset entirely.

It would take time to get back into shape, especially without Felix to kick his ass, but he and his body would figure it out. His mind, too.

He picked up the lance and turned it again.

An unsettling thought passed over him. A lifetime ago, he'd trained in this spot with Dimitri and Dedue. Dimitri had put him on his ass over and over again with increasing intensity, and the more Sylvain pushed back, the harder Dimitri pressed forward. It left a sore feeling in Sylvain's ankles, and a tension at the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down and kept going.

He couldn't avoid talking about what had happened between him and Dimitri forever. He'd figured Ingrid was right about that, too. He had to trust that he could grapple with the discomfort of the mess he'd made of his life. He had to sit with that discomfort, and make a friend out of it, and then maybe someday he would be able to put it behind him.

"Sylvain!"

Sylvain turned just in time to see a snowball get lobbed his way, and when he raised his lance to spare his face, it broke against the shaft and sprayed him with powder. His blinked the mess off his eyelashes and wiped at his face with his sleeve. Ingrid stood at the edge of the courtyard, and she stooped to prime another one. Sylvain chuckled.

"Hey, you old firebrand," he said. "I'm training over here."

"Back in form yet?" she remarked, and she smiled.

"Getting there," he said. "Do you need something?"

"I've got news on the dungeon," Ingrid said. "There might be a small problem getting into it."

"Shit," he said. "What's wrong with it?"

She gestured for him to come with her. Sylvain shouldered the lance and headed her way, watching the second snowball fall from her hand in a white cloud. He thought he'd like to be inside, anyway, with the plunging temperature.

"You were right about the water damage," she said.

"Oh shit, really?" Sylvain said. He wasn't sure if he was all that delighted about being right, given that it was likely going to make their lives a little difficult, but it felt nice anyway. "How bad is it?"

"I don't know the full extent yet," Ingrid said.

She led him inside, through the castle and to the opened dungeon stairs. A couple of knights were cleaning up some leftover rubble, and Linhardt stood at the hole's side, staring into the distance. Even from up the hall, Sylvain could feel the temperature shift once more —it was a great cold gasp from the mouth broken into the stone wall. On approach, the air was moist, and it smelled faintly of mildew and waterlogged wood. His imagination supplied the scene downstairs with such vividness that he felt inclined to just stay where he was.

"I guess we'll need a torch," he said.

Linhardt took one off the wall — Sylvain wasn't sure that it was one that was supposed to be removed, but one unhealthy-sounding metal screech later, it was in Linhardt's hands. He lit it with a muttered spell and handed it to Ingrid.

"You don't want to go in first? Scientific discovery?" Sylvain asked.

"Not really," Linhardt replied. "Aren't you the heroic one?"

"Ha."

Still, Sylvain moved to the gap. He stood with his toes just barely hanging over the edge of the top step and immediately felt his heart plunge into his stomach. The light from Ingrid's torch barely revealed the first six steps down, and the cavernous darkness yawned up at him. If he fell forward, perhaps he would fall forever, just endlessly turning head over heels until he died. Ingrid nudged him in the small of his back and he instinctively grabbed the doorframe. He wasn’t sure which scared him more: being pushed or being sucked in.

“Go,” Ingrid said.

“Go?” Sylvain repeated. “Just _go_ downstairs? Look at how dark it is.”

“We have a light.”

“Yeah, but— nevermind.”

"I'll go first if you're scared," Ingrid said. She said it nicely, but Sylvain knew she didn't quite get it.

"I am _not _scared. Give me that," he ordered, and he reached and took the torch from her. She let him have it. Sylvain went down one step, the torch held aloft. Each step he took illuminated only one more step ahead of him, and the light was so bright that his eyes struggled to adjust.

Sylvain had half a mind to just throw a torch down there and see what it illuminated first, but if it was really flooded, it wouldn't last long anyway. He didn’t think Edelgard would take too kindly to the risk of any immediate destruction of what she sought, either. So, with a hand on the wall, he started down the stairs like a toddler, one at a time. Ingrid followed behind, so close that Sylvain felt tempted to hold her hand in case something jumped out at them.

Fortunately, nothing did.

Instead, one of his boots hit water. It sloshed over that particular step like a warning sign for what was waiting below. Sylvain paused and he squinted to see beyond the torch, and then he settled for passing it to Ingrid so it was behind him, rather than blinding him. Dark water filled the floor, but he couldn't see how deep it was. Just the inch on his step alone flooded his soles quickly, and he cringed at the cold creeping into his socks. It made his skin crawl, and he stepped back up to the dry step above it.

"How deep do you think it is?" Ingrid asked.

"I don't know," Sylvain said. He glanced back at her, raising a hand to block the torch light from blinding him. He could barely see her looking down at him, seemingly at a loss. "Hey, let me have your sword for a second."

She turned her hip to him and he drew it.

He crouched down on his step, knees cracking as he did so, and he reached out with the sword to see if he could touch the bottom. He was pleased to discover that they were actually much closer to the floor than the deep pool his dreadful imagination had supplied him with.

"It's maybe ankle deep," he guessed. He swiped the sword to the side hard, splashing water. The sound echoed off the walls, and he heard it slosh until it lapped up against the stone walls. The sound alone made him shudder. He swallowed his discomfort and remarked: "Not too bad, but still. Even if we waited until summer… it's still going to be cold."

The smell was bad, too.

"It's not ideal," Ingrid agreed.

Sylvain was completely unhappy about this development. He felt as though his plan to find the damn thing for Edelgard and then move forward with a win under his belt was thrown right out the window, and though he said nothing, Ingrid reached to nudge him.

"We can write Edelgard to say it's flooded," she said.

"Do you seriously think Edelgard will hear it's ankle-deep and accept that?" Sylvain asked. "She'd probably come here just to lecture me in person about giving up too easily."

"She would," Linhardt called down.

Sylvain looked up at Linhardt's silhouette — willowy even in a winter coat, a mere stick at the top of the stairs. His heart was hammering no matter how much he willed himself to calm the fuck down. He hoped Ingrid would only see the resolve on his face.

"I came here to do this," he said.

"Well, let's go up to the top and talk about it," Ingrid said.

"I'm fine," Sylvain said, tightly, even though she hadn't asked. "But yeah. Go up."

Ingrid nodded, but she leaned against the wall so he could go first. He took the stairs two at a time, and when Linhardt was a little slow to move out of his way, Sylvain shoved his way through. Linhardt muttered some complaint and then turned back to supervise Ingrid's ascent. Sylvain wandered a ways up the hall, shaking his head. He wandered back immediately after.

"You're as pale as a ghost," Linhardt remarked. Sylvain ignored him.

"Hey," Ingrid said, as she stepped through the hole. Linhardt took the torch from her and moved into the stairway in her place. Sylvain rolled his lips over his teeth when Ingrid stepped in close to his back. "Are you alright?"

No, he didn't feel alright. He felt tempted to muster a smile and brush it off, but Ingrid frowned more every second he waffled on a response. Finally, he just shook his head. She looked confused for a moment, and then she said: "Oh. No… Sylvain."

"That was shit," he admitted.

Ingrid had rounds to do and Sylvain wasn't feeling very sociable otherwise. If not with her or Felix, he might have preferred to be alone, but it felt precarious to be alone when his thoughts were so dark. He followed Linhardt to the library instead, vowing silence to avoid inviting any tactless commentary. Linhardt said nothing, and that a poor substitute for Felix's taciturnity, but a substitute just the same. Sylvain took up post in an armchair that was missing a leg, but it was just fine to sit in as long as he kept that back corner propped up on a couple blocks of wood. Linhardt slouched at his workbench and began to do… something. Some sort of tinkering with the vials of water and a microscope. Sylvain watched him a moment and then picked up a book. _The History of Sreng._ An old one he'd read before, so many he times he surely could have recited it by memory. _Know your enemy,_ his father had often said. Sylvain had read it many times, but still he'd only ever felt like he'd truly known one.

For a good while they were quiet, Sylvain's mind meandering between Gautier's borders and Enbarr and back again, and Linhardt alternating between testing and staring into space. Sylvain finally let the book fall open against his chest.

Edelgard hadn't known what was down there, he decided. She couldn't have, and even if she had, she couldn't have known why being in a waterlogged stone dungeon might bring up some unsavoury memories for him.

It was, of course, a coincidence.

But it did sting to know if she had somehow reached into his memories and pried one out of him, it wouldn't have changed her mind about asking him. Edelgard was the sort to believe in confronting the past, after all. She was all gritted-teeth endurance, her body merely scaffolding for whatever ideal she stood for. It felt bitter to know she wouldn't blink twice before sending him down there.

Still, what would avoiding it do?

It was all fine to think about how he wanted to come to terms with things. He felt very productive and optimistic in those moments. All it took was a swift dose of reality to change his tune. It had him sprawling in that busted chair, almost reveling in how pathetic he must have looked in that moment. He imagined Edelgard watching him from the doorway with judging eyes. Pitying ones. As much as he hated to be blown off his feet just when he felt like it was coming back together, there was also a strange comfort in misery.

"Are you afraid of the dark?" Linhardt asked.

"Huh?" Sylvain undraped himself from the chair just a bit.

"Are you afraid of the dark?" Linhardt repeated.

"No," Sylvain said. "That doesn't bug me, not at all. I just had an incident with a well when I was a kid. It's the water that does it for me, and the smell."

"Oh," Linhardt said. Sylvain had never been more appreciative that Linhardt did not care about most things, as he made no effort to press Sylvain for more. He just accepted it as-is. It made Sylvain like him a little more.

Then Linhardt said: "This is such a pain. I was looking forward to getting in there. Just my luck that it's flooded and the person who is supposed to deal with it is afraid of water."

"Too bad," Sylvain said, but he thought about it a moment and asked: "What does that room have to do with crests?"

Linhardt said nothing. Sylvain craned his neck to look at him and found Linhardt staring back at him, nonplussed.

"When Felix and I first got here," Sylvain said, "you said you were here because of Crests, and everyone changed the subject."

And Sylvain, too wrapped up with how overwhelming it was to be in Fhirdiad, seeing Ingrid again, being with Felix — he'd never brought it up again, or even given it a second thought. He sat up a little straighter in his seat, and Linhardt stared into space for a moment.

"I don't really know," Linhardt said, finally. "Edelgard just told me there was crest research inside. Answers to something I've been looking for for years."

Sylvain couldn't stand that cryptic bullshit, so he just gestured for Linhardt to continue.

"Which is…?"

"How to give or take away a Crest," he said.

Sylvain wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't that. He sat up a little straighter, and then leant forward, elbows on his knees. Linhardt didn't look phased at all by how surprising it was to hear; he acted like it was nothing at all. Sylvain swallowed his breath and tried to figure out what to say.

"Is that… possible?"

"It is," Linhardt said. He leant against the desk, his cheek in the palm of one hand. "And whatever's in the dungeon has a breakthrough I've been stuck on for a decade."

Sylvain hadn't put too much thought into why Linhardt would tolerate living in Fhirdiad and putting up with the unglamorous danger of disease, but there it was. Sylvain mulled that over, feeling plenty selfish, too, for not giving any of this much thought. Felix was right. He really was wrapped up in himself, wasn't he?

"Shit," Sylvain said. "Why does Edelgard want it?"

Linhardt fixed him with a look that said _you are stupid_. Sylvain's eyebrows raised.

"Does she want to actually remove everyone's Crests?" he wondered. It was hard to not feel a little excited suddenly. He knew it would be an unpopular policy, especially amongst what was left of the elite, but he couldn't help but want it. "Fuck. She can test it out on mine, if she wants."

"I sincerely doubt she cares about yours," he said. "And don't be stupid. You might not even survive."

Sylvain didn't really want to die, but the idea of risking it didn't bother him much. He shifted in his chair again. He didn't know what crest removal would entail, and he doubted Linhardt knew either, otherwise he would have just reproduced it himself.

"Well, how else would we actually get rid of Crests?" Sylvain asked. "The bloodlines are getting diluted, sure, but it's been thousands of years and there's still the odd kid like Felix who pops a Major. Removing them entirely would be the only way."

"But why?" Linhardt asked.

"Because we want to get rid of Crests," Sylvain repeated.

"Who is _we? I_ don't," Linhardt said.

"Well, of course _you_ don't, but rich people don't want to give up their money, either, or their power," Sylvain said. "It's the same with Crests."

"What benefit would it be, to remove a Crest?" Linhardt said. "Should we give them to the poor and downtrodden?"

"No," Sylvain said. "You just get rid of it. It's worthless, it's useless."

"But why go to the effort to remove it if it's useless?"

Sylvain knew this conversation wasn't going to be worth much; Linhardt loved Crests to a degree that Sylvain thought was unreasonable, and a little ludicrous given how closely he'd allied himself with Edelgard's mission. Still, he wasn't going to back off and leave Linhardt with the impression that crests were tolerable.

"Because it stands for something," Sylvain said. "That kind of thing, if it's around, people will use it as a justification to treat people differently. Edelgard might _say_ people are not worth more just because they have a crest, but it's going to take generations for the public to believe it."

"So what?" Linhardt asked. "We force Crest-bearers to turn over their bodies just in case? If you feel so strongly about it, simply choose not to reproduce."

Sylvain sighed, head momentarily dropping in his hands, and then he said, tersely: "So pretend I just don't have kids, the crest of Gautier fades into nothing — so what? Mine isn't the only one. Are you never going to have kids?"

"No," Linhardt said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "My male fiancé and I will not be having children."

"Fuck," Sylvain replied, a little frustrated. Fine. "What about Edelgard and Hubert? Or Bernadetta and Caspar? Or Ferdinand and Dorothea? Everyone else but you is pretty busy doing their thing."

"I don't think any of them are going to sit around explaining the supremacy of their crests to their children," Linhardt said. "But you think they should have their crests removed, just in case?"

"I _really _hate debating this stuff with you, man," Sylvain replied. "I'm just saying — if there was a way to do it safely, wouldn't that be worthwhile? You could develop the technique yourself, however it works. And Edelgard's clearly interested in it, or else you wouldn't be here."

"I suppose so, but that's not really my concern."

Linhardt shrugged. Just an infuriating, maddeningly simple shrug, his expression completely deadpan. In fact, he even seemed a little smug, staring down Sylvain and knowing he was deliberately dragging him around.

"Then what is your concern?" Sylvain asked. "What's the point of all this, what's so important to Edelgard that's down there?"

Linhardt shrugged again.

"I don't know," he said.

"You don't _know_? She must have told you something else, to convince you to come all the way here, to the least comfortable city in all of Fodlan. You really just took her at her word that it would be that important?"

Sylvain's veins were thrumming. He thought his Crest might be trying to burst free.

"Yes," Linhardt said. "She showed something to me, and that was all I needed."

"What did she show you?" he demanded.

Linhardt shook his head. Sylvain rose to his feet; he thought that maybe he could make Linhardt tell him, grab him by his prissy shirts and shake him until he spoke up. He crossed the room. Linhardt watched him, unbothered, and Sylvain felt himself tremble.

"If you want my advice, which you imagine you don't," Linhardt said, "I would worry less about everyone else's business and worry more about your own."

Sylvain opened his mouth to argue, but there was nothing to be said. One, arguing with Linhardt was like arguing with a brick wall, and two, there was a weighty bit of truth there. Sylvain restrained himself. Whatever Linhardt knew, it wasn't Sylvain's business to know. He just had to swallow it, washed down with his lifelong feeling that life itself was an injustice.

He paced away from Linhardt again.

He bitterly wished that Edelgard had left him with any sort of information whatsoever, but he had lost her trust some time ago, and rightfully so. He returned to his seat, raking his hands through his hair.

"What I want to know," Linhardt asked, "is what_ you _have to do with the dungeon."

"Nothing," Sylvain replied, curtly. "She wanted Felix. I'm her second choice."

"But Edelgard said your crest had something to do with it," Linhardt insisted.

That stopped Sylvain cold, his mind grinding to a halt. Him?

"My crest? How?"

"She said it was down there, marked in stone," Linhardt replied. He had the grace to look the tiniest bit apologetic but Sylvain didn't feel it at all.

Suddenly everything made sense, and he knew why she had been so scarce on details. It wasn't that she didn't trust him. She obviously trusted him just fine, what with her constant insistence that he was a good man, and that he was capable of great things, and to let him handle the dagger. Any other day, or even this morning, he might have been delighted to hear that sort of assurance and believe it.

But she knew he was a coward.

She knew he would run if he thought he would have to face anything to do with Gautier, and maybe she was right.

"Well, good for her for keeping that to herself," Sylvain said, tersely. "Because if she'd told me that, I never would have agreed to this."

He got up and walked out.

Sylvain pulled on his coat and headed out the castle's front door. The heavy door settled back into its frame behind him with a tremendous thud, and he nearly slipped on the stairs for being too hasty, but he caught himself and kept going. He didn't quite know where he would find Ingrid, but he knew she was somewhere in the city, so he might as well start looking. Better than waiting around the castle and stewing. 

If anyone knew a little more about what Edelgard had said about Gautier, it was probably Ingrid, wasn't it? They wrote letters all the time. Felix was a good bet too, but with him gone—

He fetched Horse from the stable and tacked her up, and he headed out into the city at a decent clip. He asked every knight he saw along the way if they knew where Ingrid was, but none of them had decent answers for him. Sylvain didn't expect them to know, exactly — it was a big city and Ingrid's rounds took her all sorts of places — but he smiled gamely and thanked them nonetheless before pursuing his path.

The city was bustling, as it always seemed to be. Horse did not take kindly to being ridden through the crowds, and it was much slower than he expected, but at least being mounted gave him a decent vantage on seeing above the crowd. It also made him feel highly visible, so he pulled up his hood at one point.

"Sir," a man said, tugging on his trouser leg. "Can you spare some coin?"

Sylvain turned in the saddle, pulling in Horse's reins tight to slow her down, as he did not want to drag the man through the crowd.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't have any."

The man let him go just as quickly, likely to move on to another mark. Sylvain turned his eyes ahead of him, and was just as quickly beseiged by another: a woman stepped out and grabbed Horse by the reins, stopping her outright. Sylvain frowned.

"Sir," the woman said, "Where are you from? Do you perchance need a bed for the night?"

"No, I'm fine," he said. "Release my horse, please…"

This sort of interruption continued most of his way, with most of his interlopers dressed in little better than rags, their entire wardrobes layered on their backs for want of warmth. Some were mere beggars, all of them ready to go on their way to find a better mark as soon as they were asked, but others seemed pretty decently off, desperate only for enough business to support a struggling merchant class. Sylvain imagined the only reason he was being targeted was that he had a horse, and no matter how much of a fleabitten old nag Horse was, that alone was a marker of some success. The Archbishop's shadow still loomed over the city in the form of smoke-stains and burned-out stone structures. It was a place of uncertainty, and Sylvain knew that many of its people lived in a state of perpetual concern for where they would sleep that night and what they would eat.

But, he reminded himself, it was not a place solely of fear and decay. Homes could be rebuilt. Crops could grow again. The city was being restored, slowly but surely.

Another woman grabbed at his trouser leg, this one clutching a baby to her chest. For the first time, Sylvain wished he had something to give, but his pockets were empty again. He looked down at her and her child pityingly.

"Sorry," he said, "I really don't have any money."

"I don't need money," she insisted. She looked terrified, and her eyes were very glassy. "My child is very sick, and the hospital on this side of the city is full… I worry he won't make it."

Sylvain wasn't sure what to say to that. He looked down at the baby. Every baby he'd ever seen was very pink, but this baby looked pallid, almost grey. Sylvain pursed his lips for a moment. His own child was somewhere in the world at that very moment — at every moment — and he imagined what he would want someone to say if her mother had to approach some stranger for help.

"What can I do?" Sylvain asked.

"There's another hospital some ways away. But…" she trailed. She paused and swallowed her breath, and she looked down. Sylvain leaned a bit to look. Her boots were in a sorry state, and given the way she was standing, Sylvain wondered how she was on her feet at all. He immediately knew exactly what she was asking.

"Give me directions and I'll get you there," he said. He slid from the saddle. He knew that they would be slower on foot, but there was no way Horse would carry his heavy ass _and_ some woman and her child. He moved the reins over Horse's head so he could lead properly, and then he stepped around to her side. "Can you mount?"

"Not while I'm holding her," she said.

"Okay," he said. "Want me to lift you, or do you want me to take him…?"

She shook her head adamantly, clutching the baby a little tighter. Sylvain guessed it was a no to the latter; he wouldn't want some stranger holding his baby if she was in her position. He stepped around her and put his hands to her waist. She was hardly petite, even under all those layers, but he'd manage.

"I'm going to lift you, alright?" he said. "You ready? Hold on tight."

She nodded and leaned against his hands to get one foot up in the stirrup. When she had it, he boosted her up. He grit his teeth as he lifted, and he held her up there while she got her other leg over and settled into the saddle. (Bless Horse for being so short.) The baby stirred, moaning out some noise Sylvain barely heard over the crowd.

"We okay?" he asked. "Good?"

"Let's go," she said.

Sylvain led Horse on, walking as quickly as he could part the crowds. Horse bobbed her head, unused to such an odd rider, but on they went.

"What's your name?" Sylvain asked.

"Gabrielle," she said, her voice a little shaky. "And yours?"

"Jose," he replied. There was an upcoming fork in the road, and he glanced back at her for direction. She gestured with some difficulty; with one arm on the baby, she seemed to want the other to be on the saddle horn at all times, lest she fall. Not a rider, he guessed, but that was alright, she didn't need to be. He just led Horse on. Even when they hit gaps in the crowd, it was difficult to coax Horse into anything more than a proud walk, as a trot might have jostled the woman right off Horse's back.

"Thank you for this," she said. "I couldn't take another step… I thought I was going to collapse…"

"It's no problem," Sylvain said. "I'm sorry I can't help with more."

"A dozen others couldn't help me at all," she said. "You must have a child of your own."

Sylvain kept his eyes ahead of them, and he didn't look back. He wasn't sure what kind of grimace passed across his face.

"I do," he said. He'd never told a stranger before, and it made him a little nervous to say so, but she sounded like she was going to cry, and he imagined it was comforting to her. Now Felix wasn't the only person who knew, if Hubert hadn't figured it out by now. "A bit older than yours, though. She's four. She's with her mother, outside the city."

Something around four, he thought. Maybe still three. He didn't want to admit he didn't quite remember off-hand.

"My husband works away from me too," she said. She sniffled. "He gets hauling jobs here or there and is gone for weeks at a time…"

Sylvain didn't want to disappoint her by revealing how dissimilar they were, so he didn't offer much in reply — just polite questions, interest in her life. He had no desire to wind himself up in more half-truths, especially when he was in a city that wouldn't be kind to him if found out. He just kept pressing through the crowds, and when they reached the far edge of the market, the space opened up a fair bit more. Sylvain pulled Horse into a quicker pace, idly listening to Gabrielle dole out her life story.

Finally, they arrived at the public hospital. It was an old church with boarded-up windows, and it looked busy, too, but not nearly as busy as the marketplace had been.Sylvain hooked Horse's reins over a post and went to her side. Gabrielle struggled to dismount so Sylvain helped her down, and when her feet hit the ground, she buckled. Sylvain ducked to catch her, and instead of setting her upright again, he just scooped her up. She protested, insisting she could walk, but he paid her no mind, carrying her up the steps and right inside. A nun met him at the door, and though he felt a tickle of nervousness, he swallowed it and followed her directions to bring Gabrielle to an open cot. A call went up for help, and a couple other nuns swarmed over, all of them tending to the baby and her mother.

Sylvain backed off. There wasn't much more he could do, and with Gabrielle and the baby seen to, he slipped back out the front. One of the nuns called a "thank you" after him, and he just raised a hand in acknowledgement and went back out the door.

Horse was waiting for him, and some kid was routing through her saddlebags. Sylvain sighed; there was nothing in them, which he was sure the kid would find out sooner rather than later. He shooed the kid away and remounted, but then he just sat there for a moment, wondering what to do.

Did he still go find Ingrid?

He thought about it for a moment and then turned Horse around to head back to the castle.

Ingrid returned just before sundown. Sylvain watched her come in from the steps by the eastern gate, his ass frozen from sitting on the stone for too long, his fingers wound into his pockets. He fixed her with a sigh and a pleading look as she approached the stairs. 

"Hey," she said. "How are you feeling?"

She walked by him, and as she passed, she tousled his hair back. Sylvain reached to scruff it forward again and got up to follow her. He jogged ahead of her to get the door.

"Like shit," he said, holding the door open for her as they passed. "You?"

"The same," she said, with a bit of a sigh. Sylvain wasn't sure if he could dump his little tiff with Linhardt on her without seeming petty, or if he could demand to know if she knew anything about the crest of Gautier in the dungeon. He didn't want to step on her toes with accusations, so he decided to pacify her first.

"What went wrong with your day?" he asked.

Ingrid stopped dead in her tracks, forcing him to stop short to avoid bashing into her. She looked up at him with a guilty expression on her face. He sensed his day was wasn't done fucking with him.

"Felix didn't go back to Remire," she said.

_That chickenshit little liar, I am going to fucking kick his ass into next year_, Sylvain thought, even while the other half of him hoped it meant Felix was right behind them. He glanced back at the door and saw no one, so he looked back to Ingrid, pointedly. Where the hell did he go, then?

"And?" Sylvain asked, tersely.

Ingrid fished something out of the front of her coat. It was an opened letter with her name on it. Sylvain's heart caught in his throat.

"From Edelgard?" he said. He took it very carefully. He didn't want to read it, and yet he wanted to know. But how would she know anything about Felix? He didn't open it. He just stared at Ingrid.

"No," Ingrid said. "Annette."

"He's with_ Annette?"_

Ingrid nodded.

"Apparently he showed up at the School of Sorcery and only meant to stay for a couple days, but he's still there now— _Sylvain!_ Wait!"

Sylvain had turned on his heel to head to the door. He'd go over and grab Felix and corner him and beg him to give him another chance. Just one last chance, like Ingrid had. If Ingrid could give him another chance, then surely Felix could—

Ingrid quickly followed him to the door and grabbed him by the elbow, stopping him dead. Her grip was firm. He thought to throw her off, ready to go right back to the stables, retack Horse, and storm on over there.

"I'm not going to run after him, and I don't want you in the city alone," Ingrid implored him. "You shouldn't run off half-cocked, and…"

She trailed.

"He obviously wants space."

Sylvain sighed and put his hands in his face.

_Fine._


	31. The Thinning Ice

“Margrave Gautier!”

Sylvain’s skin crawled, imagining his father was not only nearby but being actively summoned to his vicinity, but fortunately, the Gautier being addressed was him. _He_ was Margrave Gautier, too, if only out of courtesy, being the eldest son and heir. He turned and found himself approached by a knight, who held out a ring. Sylvain offered a hand to take it.

“It appears you mislaid this, my lord,” the knight said, placing the house ring in the cup of Sylvain's palm. Sylvain smiled and fingered it on.

“It’s always getting away from me, isn’t it?” Sylvain remarked. He clapped the knight on the shoulder; the ring made a tiny clink where it connected with the knight’s pauldron. “I'm normally on top of things. Thanks for returning it.”

The knight nodded. Sylvain peered at him for a moment, as if he could possibly see more of the fellow’s face behind the grille, but he saw nothing but the sliver of his eyes. It was a shame to him that one of his two true allies in this place was almost completely unknown to him. He didn’t even know the knight's name. How sad was that?

“For your trouble,” Sylvain said, pressing a coin into the knight’s hand. He came away with an envelope, which he tucked into the breast of his shirt. Sylvain felt his lips part to say something, but nothing came out. The knight waited. No sense in leaving him hanging. “And maybe I could buy you a drink sometime?”

The knight hesitated before shaking his head.

“I have my duty to attend to,” the knight said.

Sylvain cocked his head curiously. Hesitation counted for something, he thought. He couldn't be deterred by that.

"Maybe dinner, then?" he asked. "Hell, I'll take an hour in the library with a board game. I want to get to know you, after all this time."

"Hmm," the knight said, finally. "I suppose it couldn't hurt."

"Great!" Sylvain said, cracking a smile. "There's a tavern just a little bit into town, the one with the pony on the sign. Meet me there tonight?"

The knight nodded.

"I finish my shift at sundown," he said.

Sylvain clapped him on the shoulder once more, grinned, and walked off without another word.

"You asked our liaison out for dinner?"

Felix's tone suggested he thought this was the worst idea he'd ever heard. Sylvain elected not to see it that way, but when he decided not to dignify Felix's incredulousness with a response, Felix dropped the lid of his trunk closed with a loud slam.

"You're out of your mind," Felix said.

"Hey," Sylvain protested, shaking off the loud noise and cozying back into his place sprawled on Felix's bed. "It's just a drink. I figured it wouldn't hurt to get to know the guy who has been risking his life to pass information between Fhirdiad and Garreg Mach for two years now."

Felix sighed and resumed his frantic pacing around the room. That frantic pacing was the reason Sylvain had set up post on the bed — it seemed like the most out-of-the-way place he could be while Felix packed his trunk. Packing should have theoretically not taken that long, as Felix did not keep much in the way of personal possessions in Fhirdiad, but he was on edge, and he was uncharacteristically meticulous about everything being packed properly. On an average day, Sylvain might have appreciated that, but today it bothered him.

"You're only going to be gone for two moons, Felix," Sylvain said, as Felix moved a stack of books from his dresser to the bottom of the trunk. "There's no way you're going to re-read all those."

Felix did not look up.

"My father might want me to stay longer."

"Since when do you care about what your father wants?"

Felix straightened up again and let out a long, exasperated breath. Maybe he was right to, but Sylvain didn't feel like he was wrong, either. Felix held up a silencing hand. "I'm going to Fraldarius, and then I'll be back. You'll be just fine without me. We talked about this."

"I'm just saying you don't have to do what he says."

"You don't get to criticize me for that," Felix said.

Sylvain rolled his eyes and then stared up at the ceiling, or anywhere but Felix. That song and dance was getting old, but Sylvain knew it would happen again and again and again. It always did. What _were_ they supposed to do about Dimitri? How were they supposed to turn the tides of war?

Felix crossed the room again, opened a dresser drawer, and withdrew a couple of hunting knives. He carried them like they were precious jewels. They both lapsed into silence for a bit, and then Felix directed them back to the tinder that had lit this entire non-argument:

"Tell me verbatim what she said. I want to hear it from your mouth."

_ She _was Edelgard, of course.

Sylvain fished out the letter. Felix leant against the trunk, and though Sylvain offered him the letter, Felix didn't take it. Fine. Sylvain opened the letter and read aloud:

_ "It is time for you to withdraw. I do not feel there is anything more to be gained by your presence in Faerghus. While your efforts have been valiant, I am concerned for your safety. You have much more to contribute to the war effort by fighting on our side._

_I am alerting all of our border captains to be on the lookout for your arrival, and to deliver you to our outpost at Garreg Mach. Try the road through Charon."_

Sylvain let the last words fall from his lips like stones. He thought to crumple the letter between his palms, but he wanted to maintain that he was the reasonable one. It didn't matter.

"Do you understand?" Felix asked.

"Felix, come on––"

Felix scoffed and went back to packing, but Sylvain could see the tension rippling through Felix's posture; his shoulders squared, his steps a little more stormy.

"How can she not believe in us?" Sylvain asked, sharply. _How do you not believe in us?_

Felix closed the trunk, swung the iron latch shut, and threaded the lock through it. He locked it and pocketed the key, and then walked over to Sylvain and gestured for him to move his feet. Sylvain did so, groaning as he sat upright and crossing his legs to leave Felix space.

"We're _not_ having this argument again," Felix said, firmly. "So I'm going to skip to the end of it, the part that shuts you up for a bit."

Sylvain was sure that this time he could have come up with a fabulous argument that would avoid the part where Felix rubbed his face in their mess, but it didn't matter. At some point, it was always easier to pacify than it was to win.

"Felix," Sylvain started.

"In two years," Felix cut him off, "we have lied _daily_ to secure our own safety in the lion's den. We have lied to our families, our friends, and ourselves. Some days, I'm not sure who I'm actually serving, because in those two years, I have not put my blade in a single enemy… but I have cut down several people fighting for _my_ ideals."

The first part always hurt the worst. Sylvain didn't contemplate it. There wasn't a point in ruminating on what hurt. He wished Felix understood that.

"We have done absolutely nothing to clear Edelgard's path to Fhirdiad," Felix continued.

"I know," Sylvain said.

"If you know then I shouldn't have to repeat it," Felix said, testily.

That sounded exactly like something his father would say, and that put Sylvain in a notably less charitable mood, so he waved his hand vaguely.

"Okay," he said. "Point taken. Do you need to go on?"

"Apparently I do," Felix said. "Because every attempt we've made to push the Boar towards parting from the church or making peace with the Empire has failed to produce _any_ measurable results."

Sylvain grimaced. He didn't like that Felix thought a lack of results meant they couldn't figure something out going forward.

"Felix," Sylvain said.

"Let me finish," Felix ordered. "Our entire presence in Fhirdiad has been deeply pointless, and a waste of two years we could have been fighting on the side we're _really_ on."

"Felix—"

Felix leaned over and clamped a hand to Sylvain's mouth, hard, the other hand on the back of his neck so he couldn't lean away. Sylvain looked at him, mumbling some protest against Felix's palm, but Felix held firm when Sylvain tried to wrest him off. He hated how Felix felt the need to _fight _him when they could be fighting—

"_Stop_," Felix said, curtly. "The Archbishop is better at grooming Dimitri to the Church's needs than we could ever hope to counterbalance."

It was the use of Dimitri's name that prompted Sylvain to stop resisting. Felix held onto him a moment longer, and then he dropped the hand over Sylvain's mouth. His other hand lingered for a moment, hot on the back of Sylvain's neck, and then slid up into his hair and stayed there.

"I think she's right. And I think it's time for us both to leave," Felix said.

Felix had never said that part before.

"We have failed."

Sylvain froze. He had never said that before, either.

But Sylvain did not feel like he could abide by that. He brushed Felix's hand out of his hair and he stood up, pacing away across the room. A very particular frustration burned on the tip of his tongue, somewhere between himself for not doing enough and Felix for wanting to give up.

Their time here did not count for nothing. It was not pointless. Without them, who could say what would have happened to Dimitri? Even now, Sylvain felt that Dimitri was walking a knife's edge, and he'd seen what had happened when Ingrid had left — he'd heard, at least a hundred times, Dimitri rant and rage about Ingrid's betrayal, and how Edelgard had poisoned her, and how he would kill anyone before he allowed Edelgard to poison another—

Sylvain cut his thoughts short. No. That was what they were trying to avoid.

But Felix didn't let it go.

"Sylvain," Felix said. "You're just scared of standing up to him."

Sylvain stopped by the window. He raked both hands through his hair and looked out. He could see a sliver of the city. In the streets, amongst the people doing their evening shopping, Sylvain could see a path being cleared for two Knights of Seiros dragging a man by his arms. The man was as limp as a rag doll. People were yelling, shaking their fists. It did not give Sylvain any pause at all.

"I'm going to Fraldarius for two moons," Felix said, finally. "Eight weeks. While I'm gone, you should wrap up whatever you need to. Talk to your father. Talk to the Boar, carefully, if you must. And when I get back, we'll plan our departure. Whether you've made your peace with it or not, we do have to leave, because I _know_ you've lost sight of what's important."

Tearing his eyes away, Sylvain turned to Felix with incredulity.

"You don't think Dimitri is important?"

Felix didn't say anything for a moment, and then he said: "I think the people of Faerghus are important. I think overthrowing the Church is important. I think _we_ are more important."

"I'm not saying those aren't important," Sylvain argued. It felt tedious to keep his voice calm, but neither of them were inclined to shout even if they weren't traitors in their own nation. He breathed out hard and continued: "I'm saying no one knows what we know, so no one is looking out for Dimitri but us. The Empire can handle the other things."

"You know this is exactly why I didn't want to argue about this," Felix said. "Just… just think about it while I'm gone, alright?"

"Alright," Sylvain relented. What else was he going to do? Add another log on the fire by pointing out that Felix had all but given up on Dimitri years ago, so of course he wouldn't understand? Fan the flames by pushing an argument he couldn't win?

Felix was just too argumentative to understand this, too bitter. Sylvain had spent his entire life in service to pacifying the people around him and easing tensions. He _knew_ he was good at it. He'd started crawling into his mother's lap while she cried when he was very small, and then graduated to mediating between Miklan and their father, and then coaxing Felix and Ingrid to make up after some spat, and now coaxing Dimitri to toe an increasingly blurry line with increasingly shaky feet. Sylvain was a shoulder to cry on, an arm to lean on, a back to carry others, and even now, he _liked_ that he could be that person. And even in situations where he could do absolutely nothing of value, he could at least smile and laugh and joke.

Why couldn't Felix just trust him with what he was best at?

Felix stood up and returned to his trunk, which he took by one end and dragged over to the door. The wood scraped and screeched, too heavy to lift by one man alone. Sylvain sighed and followed him, picking up the other end to help. Both of them fell quiet, but it felt bitter, and Sylvain felt it weigh on his shoulders worse than the trunk did. He didn't want Felix to leave like this, but a small part of him resented that Felix had never _really _tried.

Together the two of them maneuvered the trunk out the door, and started taking it down the stairs. That was even slower going, and Sylvain swung them around so he was on the lower steps — it was better, he figured, because if they stumbled and someone got knocked down the stairs and concussed or died, it would be him rather than Felix.

"I can get one of the Knights to help me with this, you know," Felix remarked as they worked their way down.

"No," Sylvain said, firmly. "I'm helping."

"Alright," Felix said, as if he were relenting to something, but when Sylvain glanced up at Felix instead of his feet, he looked remarkably calm. Remarkably resigned. "I just thought you'd want to avoid throwing your back out before your date."

"Fuck off," Sylvain replied. He meant it jokingly, but with the tension running between them, it didn't settle right. He tried again, lighter: "It's not a date!"

Felix rolled his eyes.

"Well," Felix said, "I'm headed out first thing in the morning. When you're finished with your not-date, do you want to do something tonight?"

"Of course," Sylvain agreed. "But you can come with me, too, you know. Seeing as it's not a date."

"I'll pass on that," Felix said. "I don't think we need to take an even bigger risk, and I have to have dinner with my father." He rolled his eyes. "It's so redundant, I have to see him all day anyway… ugh. And we have that meeting with the King this afternoon…"

"Sure, sure," Sylvain said.

He glanced up at Felix again. Felix was looking down at the trunk with such intensity that he didn't notice Sylvain watching him. His eyelashes were long and dark. His mouth was pulled into the slightest little snarl of concentration. Sylvain thought that even if he was cross with Felix, he'd miss his sourness. His honesty. Being alone was worse than being unhappy with each other.

And he would be alone, he thought. How could Felix blame him for wanting to get to know their liaison a little better?

Truthfully, it had been a while since he'd gotten to go on a date with anyone.

Being back in Fhirdiad had quickly spelled the end of his carefree dating at Garreg Mach, but he'd quickly realized that he'd established a pace for himself at Garreg Mach that was difficult to slow down from. Now his hook-ups had taken on a much more urgent and frivolous tone, and the seduction tricks he'd picked up at the Academy were employed largely to get attractive people into his bed and then out again just as quickly. Overtures of romance were quick to go. What was the point? There were a myriad of reasons for this choice, but three informed his philandering:

First, the risk of being found out as a double-agent would cast a suspicious eye on anyone he had been too cozy with. He did not want to burden someone with that kind of trouble just for having been on his arm more than once. As a result he'd developed a fondness for servants, the kitchen girls and chambermaids who rotated in and out of Dimitri's service in particular. They weren't likely to stick around. It did feel grotesque — he was well aware that as the heir to one of Faerghus' great houses, he had a particular leverage over them — but somehow the grotesqueness felt ignorable when they were all suffering together.

Second, he had his own neck to consider. Faerghus was steeped in political strife, both internal and external, and he no longer felt thrill in being chased down by some girl's furious lord-father, not when it could lead to more dangerous machinations. He figured if Rhea wanted to get rid of him, she could easily mark him as something indefensible. Sylvain knew no one, not even his father, would rally behind an accused criminal. What kind of criminal, Sylvain couldn't be sure, but sleeping around indiscriminately seemed like a sure way to attract unwanted attention.

And third, most threatening of all, his father stating:

_The Gautier seed is not to be spilled carelessly._

Sometimes he thought about what his dating life — and his life in general — would look like had he stayed with the Black Eagles. He imagined himself as this roguish man mounted on a splendid warhorse, charging off to battle every week, traveling the border. He would leverage his knowledge of Faerghus to help push past the Kingdom's defences, and he would have a delightful and enriching rapport with the soldiers around him. Felix and Ingrid would be with him, as well as all of their classmates from Garreg Mach, and they would carouse and toast to their future together. To Fódlan's future.

But, he reminded himself, Dimitri would not be there. Dimitri would be helpless — manipulated by Rhea, Duke Fraldarius, Gilbert, and the myriad of others who would only use him as an attack dog to sic on the Empire, waiting until he was killed so they could seize full control of the throne. Dedue would do his best, but he could barely see to Dimitri's basic needs, and as a man of Duscur, he had no recourse amongst the nobility of Faerghus.

If doing that for Dimitri meant giving up some swath of his dating life, so be it.

But this time next year, he promised himself, he would be back at Garreg Mach. He didn't know how yet, but he knew with just a little more time, he could make it happen. When he rode into Garreg Mach, it would be with Dimitri at his side.

While the war room was very busy, Dimitri was the first sight Sylvain took in when he arrived for the meeting. Their young King was standing at the table, gazing down at the tin tokens laid across the map, a hand at his chin as he ruminated the movements of vast armies. Sylvain glanced down at them and immediately noticed what was giving Dimitri trouble, but he kept it to himself. Rodrigue and Gilbert were at the other end of the table, and though almost everyone in the room was engrossed in their own conversations, Sylvain knew he shouldn't risk making Dimitri look bad if they overheard.

Dimitri was very sensitive about that.

"Hey," Sylvain said.

Barely anyone looked up. Everyone who did was lower than him in rank, save for Dimitri. Dimitri looked done with his day already, and that alone prompted Sylvain to stand a little straighter.

"You're late," Dimitri informed him.

"The meeting hasn't even started yet, Your Majesty," Sylvain said. A beat. "It won't happen again."

Dimitri scoffed and turned his eyes back to the tabletop. He brushed his hair from his eyes. The front had grown so long that it was almost to the tip of his nose, and the back could have made for a pretty solid ponytail if he put some effort into it. Sylvain's eyes drifted to Felix; Felix was crossing the room, stepping into the conversation with his father and Gilbert. Whatever he opened with made Rodrigue frown. Sylvain watched a little back-and-forth happen, and then Rodrigue looked up, directly at Sylvain.

Uh oh. Sylvain knew exactly what was coming next, even before Rodrigue moved around the table to him.

"Sylvain," Rodrigue said.

"Sir," Sylvain replied, with a little bow of his head. He glanced aside at Felix, who looked thoroughly unhappy about something. Probably whatever Rodrigue was about to say next.

"Yet again, your father insists that you respond to his letters," Rodrigue said.

"He told me that himself in his last one," Sylvain said, and he smiled, even though he knew it would bite him in the ass. Rodrigue's stony expression iced over. Sylvain relented with an even bigger smile. "I'll see if I can find time to write him back tonight."

"That is what you've said the last three times we've had this very conversation," Rodrigue replied, curtly. "And your father has made it quite clear to me that if you continue to ignore him, I am to escort you back to Gautier myself."

Dimitri slammed his fist on the table to draw everyone's attention.

"Rodrigue," Dimitri snapped, and a very different threat settled on Sylvain's skin. "You will do no such thing. I have need of Sylvain here."

Rodrigue pursed his lips.

"I understand, Your Majesty," Rodrigue replied, smoothly. There was something floating behind his teeth there, and Sylvain caught Felix's gaze. Dimitri had no such need for Felix; otherwise, Felix wouldn't be taking a sabbatical to Fraldarius. Given their argument, Sylvain felt a twinge of personal pride at that, even bravado. Dimitri_ needed_ him.

With Dimitri in his corner, he had little fear of being sent to Gautier by force. His father could no sooner drag him back to Gautier than Edelgard could drag him to Garreg Mach. Sylvain's father didn't _need_ the letters, either, because he had ears everywhere in Fhirdiad; he was a close friend to not just Rodrigue, but an entire generation of nobility that could report on his son. Even if their relationship was strained, as long as each of them served the best interests of king and country and the mighty Gautier bloodline, Sylvain had a measure of freedom.

"Now that we've quelled the rebellions and brought Eastern Faerghus to heel, we will have more than adequate resources to push Edelgard back," Dimitri said. He raised his voice just enough for it to boom across the room, hushing the chatter and bringing the meeting to its start. "We are no longer on the defensive. And Sylvain may have more experience with Edelgard's tactics than anyone else in all of Faerghus — it is time for him to prove his worth to my war cabinet."

Sylvain felt all eyes swivel to him then. It was as frightening as it was powerful. Dimitri wasn't wrong, but Sylvain wasn't sure that board games were the same as warfare. Still, he wasn't about to make Dimitri look like a fool in front of everyone for equating battlefield tactics with board games, so he straightened his back and smiled.

"A whole year of training with her, as well as weekly sessions studying strategy," Sylvain said. He had to lift his voice to reach the entire room, but it just didn't have the same gravitas that Dimitri's rumble did. Even if it had been dark and impressive, he wouldn't have felt less guilt clawing up his throat. But that was alright, he told himself. He wasn't going to help Dimitri kill Edelgard.

Rodrigue looked unconvinced.

_Eight weeks in Fraldarius, _he told himself. He'd think about it, certainly.

"Then let us plan how we will destroy her and her empire forever," Dimitri ordered.

"Charon," Sylvain said. "She's been making bids everywhere else along the border to spread out your forces, and then she'll go through Charon. I've seen her try that strategy before."

Just beyond Dimitri, Felix was watching him, and Sylvain watched him in turn. He had never seen more doubt in Felix's eyes. Sylvain looked away.

He'd prove to Felix that they _could _make a difference here.

It was approaching nightfall when Sylvain was freed of his new responsibilities and could head out into the city. It was quiet, and the lamplighters crossed the city lighting the street-lamps, chasing back the dark one by one. Sylvain knew drinks and possibly dinner wouldn't last too long; curfew was a couple hours after nightfall. The Knights of Seiros kept up a heavy patrol to keep the order while the Kingdom army protected Faerghus' border, and they were much more strict. 

Though the war had not reached anywhere close to Fhirdiad, Sylvain certainly felt its austerity. Faerghus had been in a state of decline ever since King Lambert's death, but the war had been like introducing water to wood: the whole house could crumble for the growth of rot, and the want of a strong foundation. As Sylvain walked to their chosen meeting place, he saw more than one broken window stuffed with rags that might have been hastily fixed just years ago. There were a couple people out scavenging, one knocking on doors and asking for scraps — lumps of coal, scraps of rags or rope, old wood and other things they could sell in bundles. The scavengers were a part of any city life, Sylvain knew, but to see them out this close to dark was a sign that times were getting truly tight. Fhirdiad had some of the most developed sewage and waste systems in all of Fodlan, after the plagues, but without someone progressive on the throne, they had since fallen into disrepair, and someday…

Sylvain shook that thought off and let himself into the tavern. It was crowded inside, though not particularly chatty; a low hum of conversation floated around, and most people sat tightly around tables with their heads together. Sylvain pushed through until he spotted a single empty seat at the counter, and when he approached, another cleared up. He stripped off his coat and laid it over one, and he sat in the other.

"What can I get you, Master Gautier?" a serving woman called to him.

"Nothing yet, I'm waiting for someone," Sylvain replied.

He realized he didn't know who he was looking for; his liaison certainly wouldn't be walking into the tavern in his knight uniform, much less a helmet. Sylvain didn't have any worry for being recognized, at least.

While he waited, he pulled Edelgard's letter from its envelope and flipped it face down so the empty back was available to him. He waved down the serving woman again and asked for a pen, which she brought him, along with an inkwell. He penned a quick reply to Edelgard:

_ Can't do it. He needs me._

He paused, and upon imagining her upset at being refused an order, he added:

_ Sorry. SJG._

Felix wouldn't be very happy if he knew, but Sylvain figured if his liaison left with this letter tonight, then Edelgard would have it in four or five days. Another four or five after that, he'd have another response. They could go back and forth a few times and smooth things over again in the eight weeks that Felix would be gone, and it was long enough for him to try something new with Dimitri. What, he wasn't sure, but he'd think long and hard on that. He wasn't going to devote another minute to the idea of abandoning his friend.

Sylvain blew on the ink until it dried, and then he returned the letter to its envelope and tucked it in the waistband of his trousers. As he returned the pen and ink to the woman, a young man moved his coat and took the seat next to him. Sylvain glanced over, not sure if the space was being taken by its rightful guest or if someone was usurping on his not-date. The young man smiled, and then Sylvain did too. He was older, maybe by five or six years, and Sylvain felt he recognized him from somewhere. He couldn’t place where, but it was as natural to him as if an old schoolmate had slid onto that seat. Sylvain glanced him over, head to toe.

“Now I know why you wear that helmet all the time,” Sylvain said.

The man raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said. “You’d never get the girls off you.”

The man flushed red. Sylvain delighted in that scrap of success, and it made him feel a little less lonely. Sylvain waved down the tavern master and got two mugs of ale for them. His companion flashed him an appreciative smile. He was very handsome, but not in a way that Sylvain could compare to himself. Something a little closer to Felix — high cheekbones, almond eyes, lips resting in a curved little pout. Lighter hair, though. Not quite as lean.****

“Do I get to know your name?”

“Alphonse,” he replied. “Alphonse Lefebvre.”

A Faerghus commoner’s last name — a craftsman. Commoners weren’t numerous amongst the Knights of Seiros, and it made sense to Sylvain that in all the Kingdom, a commoner might have the most reason to spy for the revolution. Sylvain imagined that might make him more vulnerable, too. No noble family to speak for him if he was caught. No leverage.

Sylvain smiled a little.

“Should I say mine?” he said. “I feel like you probably know way more about me than I do you...”

Alphonse laughed. That cheer was such an alarming thing after two years of professional silence — Sylvain couldn’t help but laugh, too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard that kind of merriment at all.

“Why not?” Alphonse said. “We don’t know each other, after all.”

Judging by his accent, he was from somewhere relatively central.

“Okay,” Sylvain chuckled. “I’m Sylvain.”

He reached to clink his mug against Alphonse’s, and then they both drank. For a moment after that they were silent, listening to the buzz of the tavern behind them. Sylvain glanced around and found people avoiding his eyes. He chided himself for being stung; it was high time he got used to it, especially as the Archbishop’s popularity waxed and waned, taking Dimitri’s inner circle with it.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Sylvain asked. “You look familiar, actually.”

“I’m sure we passed each other at Garreg Mach once or twice,” Alphonse replied. “Though I do have a twin. Maybe you met him.”

“Maybe,” Sylvain said. He didn’t think they’d properly met; he figured a twin would be no more or less recognizable than his brother.

Alphonse shrugged. “I recognized you, though. My brother and I were in your brother’s year. You're a perfect portrait of him.”

His tone was light. Sylvain took it for what it was.

“Miklan, yeah,” he said, and he took a deep swig. “People say that all the time even though I don't have his looks. Were you friends at the academy?”

Alphonse smiled politely.

“I didn’t know him too well, but he certainly made himself known! I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so opinionated. Old Hanneman kicked him out of class once a week.”

“Sounds like Miklan,” Sylvain replied, and though he endeavoured to sound unbothered, it came out rueful anyway. He didn't think Alphonse even noticed.

“What is he up to now?” Alphonse asked.

Sylvain grimaced. Definitely a commoner by birth, definitely central.

“Dead,” he said, lightly.

“Oh,” Alphonse said, sounding quickly regretful. “I’m sorry. I didn't mean to bring up something serious. Was it recent?”

“It's okay," Sylvain replied. "It was a couple years ago.”

He said it like a couple years was an entire lifetime, or an eternity. It did nothing to wipe the look of concern off of Alphonse's face. Sylvain couldn't remember the last time he'd met someone so earnest. It reminded him a little bit of the Dimitri he'd known even just a few years ago, but real this time. It didn't feel like a desperate production of a one-man stage show.

“My condolences,” Alphonse said. “I can't imagine losing a brother.”

Sylvain had no idea what to say to that, but at the very least, Alphonse seemed to pick up on his disinterest in the subject, as his apologetic look slipped to something else entirely. Sylvain looked down into his mug. He itched to change the subject to something they could commiserate on, but they couldn’t even talk about their situation, not even here.

"It's okay,” he said, finally "Don't worry about it. He was a complicated guy, and he was in poor health, in the head he was kind of…"

Sylvain gestured vaguely. Alphonse grimaced sympathetically.

“Ah. I've been thinking about what it’s like to have a _king_ that isn’t mad,” Alphonse said, his voice dipping very low. That absolutely wasn't what Sylvain meant, and even with the thrum of chatter around them, it still prompted him to lean his head a little closer.

“He’s not mad,” Sylvain replied.

“He isn't?" Alphonse said. "Below the border, in the Empire, even in the Alliance… there's rumours that he's mad."

Sylvain nodded.

“He’s been through a lot,” Sylvain said, as patiently as he could. That was true. But so had everyone — and not everyone was a king. Sylvain had thought that when you were king, your sufferings in life could be balanced by the power you could wield for good. Not so for Dimitri. Sylvain pondered it for a moment, and then added: “Trust me. I know he’s a good person. Anyone would act like this when under constant siege.”

Alphonse looked at him thoughtfully, but Sylvain could tell he didn't quite understand. Sylvain shifted in his seat to better face his new friend. They had met hundreds of times in the past two years — he wanted to be understood by this person who had become part of his life in the strangest way.

"Let me try again,” Sylvain said. “Trust me when I say there’s a good person under there. He's just a little… confused. He doesn't know what he actually wants. His priorities are all out of sorts. He's just not cut out for war, and when all of this is settled… I know he'll be a good king to Faerghus.”

"It's nice to hear something good about him," Alphonse said.

Sylvain nodded. He smiled a little. He could tell Alphonse was just being polite, but he preferred the fantasy that Alphonse wouldn't be another Ingrid, or another Felix. He wanted someone to believe him.

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "Did you see him at the Academy? He was really different there. He was a good guy. Everyone wanted to be friends with him…"

"I believe it," Alphonse replied. "Say… how did you like being at the Academy? Were you happy there?"

Sylvain felt the tiniest rush surge from his ears to his heart. He knew he was being shut down, but it didn't matter.

"I loved it," he said, earnestly. "Really. I wish I was still there, every day."

The conversation meandered for a while, and pleasantly so. Sylvain felt his concerns slipping away — the battlefield was far away, on the very fringes of the kingdom, and Edelgard and all her woes and warfare trapped behind a line of Kingdom knights. Dimitri was corralled in the castle right then, watched over by Dedue. Ingrid was safe. Felix wouldn't be around to be miserable for a while. Their friends were oblivious to the strife he felt, and they were happier for it. His father was far away.

He was here, with a new friend, and the ale was rich, and the tavern warm, and the prospect of having someone else who knew what position he was in made his heart glow. Alphonse was kind, even if they weren't entirely on the same page. It felt nice to talk to someone who didn't think he was a stupid jack-off.

Before long, the tavern gave the last call and began the process of collecting on bills and shooing its patrons out the door. Sylvain fished some coins from his pocket and slid them across the counter to pay for their drinks. They could walk back together. _Maybe talk properly about changing Edelgard's mind_, he thought.

Alphonse agreed. Together they stepped out into the streets. It was well past sundown, and raining on top of that. The lanterns were being extinguished by the lamplighters, marking curfew, and one by one the street fell into the blue-black darkness. Sylvain wasn’t terribly troubled. The streets were empty save for other tavern patrons slinking off, and the odd person sleeping on a stoop to get some shelter from the rain. The yellow eyes of a cat leered out at him from a pile of rubbish. A dead carthorse lay in the street, likely to be taken away at dawn by some opportunist pie-maker. Sylvain felt his hair slowly plastering to his head from the rain.

“This was nice,” Alphonse remarked.

“Yeah,” Sylvain murmured. For a moment they said nothing, and then Sylvain laughed, his voice ringing off the empty streets. Alphonse shot him a questioning look, and Sylvain just chuckled: “You know, next week, Felix is headed back to Fraldarius for a couple moons. His father has been trying to tutor him in dukedom for the past couple years... it's been the guy's worst nightmare, and I guess they’re both at the ends of their ropes and need a break from each other.”

“They don’t get along?” Alphonse asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Sylvain said. “But he is kind of lucky, you know? Even if they don't see eye to eye, his father really cares about him, in his own way. I'd trade my father for his in a heartbeat."

Alphonse nodded politely.

"So it's just going to be you and me around for a while," Sylvain said. "Except for when you're delivering letters, anyway. Promise you won't get tired of me? I have been accused of being a _lot._"

Alphonse chuckled.

"You know I don't deliver them, right?" Alphonse asked. "I just get them to my liaison, who passes them down the line."

Sylvain raised his eyebrows.

"Huh," he said, thinking a little too much about the gulf between him and Edelgard. "I thought it was just you between me and her."

There was a patrol of Knights of Seiros up ahead. Sylvain glanced at Alphonse, who looked reluctant. Sylvain thought they could maybe talk their way through if it came to it, but before any of the knights could notice them, Alphonse took Sylvain by the hand and tugged him gently in the direction of the nearest alleyway. Sylvain felt a curl of intrigue in his lower gut and followed, mentally scolding himself for being even momentarily distracted. They shouldn't have dawdled. They walked hastily until they found a nice shadowy spot, where Alphonse stashed them both, body to body.

Alfonse whispered: "Do you have any of the letters on you?"

"Just one."

"Give it to me," Alfonse said. "You can't get caught with any of them."

"You sure?" Sylvain said. "I can talk us out of this."

"It's not worth the risk," Alfonse said, shaking his head. Guilt washed over Sylvain. It was his invitation that got them out here, after all.

Sylvain nodded reluctantly, but he didn't go quite that quickly. He nudged Alphonse a little deeper into the doorway, glancing down the alley to be sure the knights hadn't caught up with them. Sylvain lifted up the hem of his shirt to fish the response out of his trousers, and he felt the cool air on his bare stomach as he did so. Alphonse raised his eyebrows, and Sylvain pressed the letter into his hand, and then leaned in to kiss him.

Alphonse gently leaned away.

"You should go," he said.

Sylvain wasn't sure when he'd last been rejected like that, but in hindsight, it was a mistake on his part. There was nothing sensible about trying to make out with his liaison with Edelgard, and there was no reason to assume a man who had avoided even revealing his _name_ for two years would so easily jump into anything like that, especially not in a moment of apprehension. But for the moment, Alphonse just flashed him a smile and tucked the letter into his pocket.

"Go," he said.

"Going," Sylvain replied curtly. Off he went, face burning.

What the fuck was he doing?

_Too much to drink, maybe._

He walked swiftly down the length of the alley, emerging on another street. He turned left, keeping to the side of the street where he was better covered by the shadows. The rain pattered down on his shoulders and his heart hammered in his chest. As the rush of bonding with someone faded, the adrenaline of danger seeped into his veins in its place. He wound back and forth through the alleys instead of taking the main road to the gates, which took him three times the distance, but it was worth it to avoid the guards as long as possible. When he got to the gates he took a deep breath and strolled right up, casually.

"Sorry, guys," he called, cheerfully. "I got out of a tavern a little later than I expected."

"Halt," a knight ordered.

Sylvain stopped, hands in his pockets. The knight approached and peered at him through the grille of his helmet. This close, Sylvain could hear the soft plink-plink of raindrops on the knight's armour. He hadn't worn his own in so long that it was almost nostalgic.

"I know your job is your job," Sylvain said, pleasantly. "But King Dimitri is expecting me, so I'd appreciate not being held up long. You know how he gets."

The knight sighed.

"Can someone call the Captain?"

Not exactly what he wanted to hear, but it was better than being hauled off outright. Sylvain waited in the cold rain, feeling it starting to seep down into his back. He decided that if he got sick as a result, he'd complain to the Archbishop, just to waste her time. Maybe cough on her. Maybe illness would take her out.

"He was out after curfew," the knight said.

"Irresponsible brat," came the reply. It was a woman's voice, and its owner was just out of Sylvain's sight. He lifted his chin and that was all he needed to see the top of a blonde head. A-ha.

"Catherine?" Sylvain called.

She sighed and pushed her way into view; the knights parted. She crossed through the man-door and strode right up to him and sized him up.

"Sylvain Gautier," she said.

"How've the frontlines been?" Sylvain asked. "I hear you were just in Brigid."

"I was," Catherine replied. She looked him up and down, and despite her being a good bit shorter than him, her presence made him feel like he was about two inches tall. (It was kind of hot.) "I see you were screwing around after curfew again."

"What can I say?" Sylvain said. "I was having a good time."

"You never change, do you?" Catherine replied. She sighed, a hand drifting to her temple, and then she turned her back to him and waved that hand coarsely at the knights. "Why the hell are you all wasting my time on this kid? Let him in!"

The gate itself shuddered open, hoisted up on a wound chain. They only lifted it enough for Sylvain to duck under, and Catherine followed him. Sylvain glanced back at her, unsure if he should just keep walking into the castle, but Catherine fell into step behind him and thumped him on the back hard.

"Don't fuck around, Gautier," Catherine said. "I don't care how much responsibility His Majesty gives you. Lady Rhea isn't going to like it."

"Yeah?" he replied, casually.

"Yeah," she said. She took him by the elbow and stopped him, and she leveled him with a pointed look. "You know, Rhea's got a long track record of looking after us Faerghus kids. She's still looking out for you even after that stunt you pulled with the Lance of Ruin, and that whole rebellion, and your little friend attacked her."

Sylvain felt tempted to ask if Rhea's pussy was really _that_ good, but he smiled instead.

"Trust me," Sylvain said. "My devotion may be _completely_ eclipsed by yours, but I want to be here."

And then, waffling on his temptations, he put his fingers to his mouth in a V shape_. _Catherine heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"Get to bed, you little shit," she said.

She gave him another shove. Sylvain laughed, taking a hard step forward to avoid ending up on his face. He carried on, jogging up the front steps and out of her reach.

"Goodnight, Cat," he called.

"It's Captain to you," she shot back.

Sylvain just waved and headed inside, intending to go right in. He'd had enough trouble for the night, even if trouble never got enough of him.


	32. Careful

** **

"For the love of everything, stop the tortured brooding martyr thing," Ingrid ordered.

Sylvain did not stop. He kept at it, slouched at the dinner table, idly pushing little pieces of potato around on his plate with his fork. She didn't understand. His heart had been broken a thousand times in his lifetime but this one felt different. The chunk of potato fell right off the edge and that pushed Ingrid over the edge, too. She reached across the table and took it for herself. He watched ruefully as she scraped every last morsel onto her own plate, even the parts he knew she wasn't fond of. Neither said anything as she ate, and Sylvain felt himself sinking lower and lower against the table, until his chin was nearly rested on his arms.

"I'm as annoyed as you are, Sylvain," Ingrid said, finally. She moved to pick up their plates, and Sylvain hauled himself out of his sulk so he could bus them himself. She waited for him at the table while he did that, and when he returned, she added: "You can't say it's not surprising, though. He knows he shouldn't have left."

"We're his best friends," Sylvain said, hotly. It spilled out of him in a way that made him feel like he needed to rinse his mouth out. "He should have just said he wanted space, because this way it feels like he left just to get away from us." (He meant _me_, but he didn't want Ingrid to feel excluded. She probably knew anyway.) "He should have been honest with us."

"I agree," Ingrid said. "But it's complicated."

"What's so complicated? Felix _chose_ to _lie_," Sylvain insisted. "To our faces! He could have just said––"

"No. Regardless of where he ended up, Felix decided he didn't want to be here," Ingrid said. "It hurts. I know. But I meant what I said before. You should take a few days to calm down. When you're not feeling volatile… then maybe we'll both go pay the School a visit."

"I'm not volatile," Sylvain said, pointedly.

Ingrid just shook her head, and she headed upstairs. Sylvain followed. Each footstep felt like he was carrying Felix on his back.

"Do you have plans tonight?" she asked. "You _cannot_ just sit around feeling sorry for yourself."

"I won't."

But he would. He waffled over what to do with his evening, knowing he was too distracted for card games and too frustrated to put on some effusive persona for any of the knights. He couldn't even talk to Linhardt, which made him feel a little mean, as Linhardt wasn't guilty of anything but telling the truth, but he just didn't want to deal with that now. There was too much to think about — the dungeon, Edelgard, his child, Felix, Fhirdiad. He'd betrayed Ingrid and gone into the city alone. And Felix was on the forefront of his mind again. It was always Felix. There was so much going on that it was difficult to think of anything but his own feelings first.

"I don't know," he said. "Can I hang out with you?"

"For a bit," she said. "I'm meeting someone later."

The person she was seeing, perhaps? Sylvain wasn't supposed to know that, though. He wasn't sure whether he should tease her or not, but he supposed it was the natural thing, considering who he was.

"Like a date?" he asked.

Ingrid smiled very tightly, but she kept her eyes ahead of her.

"Do I get to meet him?" he asked.

"Absolutely not," Ingrid replied. "It's not that serious yet."

He walked a little quicker just to be hot on her heels. He was happy for her, truthfully. She had never seemed very interested in dating, a fact that could be equally placed on her father's matchmaking and his own dating mishaps, so it was nice to hear she was enjoying herself a little. He wondered who this Ingrid was, and what other ways she'd changed in the time they'd been apart. It didn't surprise him that she could command Fhirdiad's knights and maintain its order, but he didn't know this woman who had given up the pretences of make-up and fancy clothing, and smiled when mentioning a date. A date! Had she dated a lot when she'd no longer had to run damage control on his disastrous habits, when no longer under her father's watchful eye? Had she enjoyed that freedom?

Had she learned much from Edelgard, making the world a better place for herself as she was, flying under the banner of the Black Eagle Strike Force?

"Well, I hope you have a good time," he said. "Make good choices. Whatever I wouldn't do."

Ingrid tossed him an exasperated smile, but he knew he was worming back into her good books, slowly but surely. Ingrid let them into her room. She went to her desk and took out a piece of paper and a pen, and she gestured for Sylvain to sit.

"You want me to write lines?" he asked, flippantly. "_I will not chase Felix around the city, I will not chase Felix around the city—_"

"I'm sending a letter out to Edelgard tomorrow," she said, holding out the pen the same way she might offer him a sword. "I'll send one from you with it."

He understood the implied order, but Sylvain took the paper off the desk and pocketed it, figuring he had his own pen back in his room. Writing to Edelgard was an affair that involved a lot of hemming and hawing, hair-pulling, cursing, and occasionally some rousing pep talks. He did not feel capable of writing one in front of Ingrid.

"Alright," Ingrid sighed. "Have it to me by morning, then."

Sylvain agreed, and she turned away and began going through her wardrobe. She did not have much — a number of practical garments, and a few nicer ones that likely hadn't seen the light of day in quite some time. Sylvain wasn't sure if it was a lack of fussiness or a simple confidence that had her plucking out pieces one after the other, assembling an outfit in moments. Teal leggings with laces up the calves, a dark tunic with the waist pleated down, a leather belt that had been stamped with some sort of scrolling pattern. She draped them over her arm.

"Doesn't look like a date outfit," Sylvain said.

"What do you think I should wear, if not this?" she asked. "Turn around."

Sylvain took up a post on her bed and sat with his back to her. He stared at the wall and pondered a better outfit. He didn't know what else she had, but he could imagine something more fun. The girls in the Empire were all aflutter over low necklines, which was particularly dramatic in the brothels, where Sylvain could spy nipples even before their bodices came off. He couldn't imagine Ingrid in one of those, though, unless she was laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it.

Still… dating called for _some_ sort of effort.

"I don't know," he said. "If I were going on a date with you, I'd want to see you in something a little sexier than a tunic."

"I think you want _any _girl to show up to dates with you in nothing but their underclothes," Ingrid replied. "Or stark naked. Regardless of whether it's in her character or not."

Sylvain scoffed.

"That's not true. Guys like something to unwrap—_oof_."

Ingrid's capelet hit the back of his head. It pushed a laugh from him, and he pulled it off without turning around.

"_She_ knows what I look like, and she likes me for who I am," Ingrid explained. "I don't have to impress her."

"Yeah, but everyone _likes_ to be impressed," Sylvain said. "I've heard that so many times over the years, people claiming that they're going to find someone to be with forever by being themselves. But the truth is, there are a lot of people who are themselves out there… you kind of have to be better than yourself. Otherwise people won't give you the time of day."

Ingrid didn't say anything for a moment. He felt a creeping urge to ruminate on what Felix thought of him now and he pushed it down. Instead he peeked at Ingrid over his shoulder and saw her pulling her tunic over her head, the bare strip of her back wiggling as she eased her head through the neckline. He looked back to the wall immediately.

"That sounds pretty exhausting," Ingrid said. "I want to be loved for who I am now, and supported in who I want to become."

"That sounds pretty idealistic," Sylvain replied.

"You can turn around now," she said, and he pivoted to look. Ingrid was belting her tunic, threading the strap through the buckle and then looping it around itself so the tail hung straight down. She looked cute. Boyish, but cute. "I don't really want to get into that whole relationship thing with you again. I've been seeing her for a few months now. I know what she sees in me."

And in the time since Felix's departure, he was still alone, so he supposed she had him soundly beat anyway. Yes, he had gotten the point.

"Speaking of relationships," Sylvain said. "Felix was with Annette, right?"

Ingrid paused. Sylvain watched her mull over a response, and then she put a foot up on her trunk to re-lace her boots. As she looped the leather cording around itself and into a firm knot, she finally said: "Yes. They were together for about two years."

Sylvain let that sink in. Two years was a long time.

"Why didn't it work out?"

Ingrid sighed. She didn't think it was her business to tell him, but she must have known that it was needling for him to have to wonder. He felt bad. He liked to think that if they had just told him, he would have been happy for them, and now he was just left with being sad for them — he cared about Felix and Annette a great deal, and he didn't like to think that they'd been unhappy together.

And he was the slightest bit jealous, too. Felix never said _ten years minus the two I was with someone else_. What had made him so unworthy to be sidelined like that?

(_You were in the Kingdom,_ he reminded himself, almost obsessively. _You were with Dimitri, you chose someone else too, you—_)

"It was pretty amicable," Ingrid said, finally. "You'll have to talk to Felix eventually if you want all the answers, but…"

She gestured vaguely.

"I guess they just didn't see themselves together forever, and both of them had to come to terms with a lot. Like we all did."

"Do you think they're getting back together now?" Sylvain asked. It felt nasty in his mouth. He didn't want to be jealous, or think about Felix wanting to be with someone else. He hadn't gotten that impression at all from Annette's letter, and he supposed that in a letter to Ingrid, Annette would be a whole lot more candid than she would with him. The thought plagued him just the same.

"_No_, Sylvain," Ingrid said. "You have better things to think about than that, like what you're going to do about yourself, or getting into the dungeon, or writing to Edelgard."

She came over and thumped him pointedly, right over his breast pocket._ Ow. _His poor whale.

He felt like he was going to explode, thinking about Felix this much.

"I will," he promised, tightly. She made to move away again, but he caught her wrist and held her there. He held on and said: "Uh…"

The words died away.

"What?"

"Do you think Felix left because I'm selfish?"

Ingrid frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean… did my own personal opera get tiring?"

Ingrid's frown deepened. She used her other hand to peel his grip from her wrist, but she didn't move away. She slowly sank down to sit next to him on the bed, and Sylvain met her eyes steadily.

"Did you…?"

Sylvain nodded.

"I'm not thrilled about that," she said, her voice a little dark. He felt a twinge of justification in not telling her about leaving the castle. She asked, cautiously: "How much did you hear?"

"That bit," Sylvain said. "You didn't want to talk about me, neither did he, but then you kind of did anyway. I left when it turned into me being selfish. Which I believe me, I get. You don't have to defend it."

Ingrid pursed her lips.

"I just want to know," Sylvain repeated, "do you think Felix left because of that?"

Ingrid didn't say anything for a moment, and then she said: "I don't know, Sylvain. Maybe. You're a lot to handle. You have been for a while."

Sylvain winced. Well, he'd asked. He'd suspected. Maybe it was true. Ingrid took one of his hands between hers. And then, after a moment of silence, she pat the back of his hand and pulled away.

"Promise me you won't go storming after him while I'm out," she said. "You can even hang out in my room if you want. Write that letter. Think about what you want to do."

Sylvain nodded.

"Will do."

Ingrid flashed him a tight smile and picked up her coat off the bed, and she watched him as she pulled it on. Sylvain kept mum, the empty sheet of paper burning a hole in his pocket. He felt pretty calm, all things considered. He met her eyes and smiled tightly in return, and she reached and pat his cheek quickly, which made Sylvain want to ask her to cancel just to keep him company, but he didn't. He wanted her to enjoy herself, and he knew sitting around in her room talking about Felix and Edelgard and whatever else came up wasn't going to make for a riveting evening.

Off she went.

He pondered the tyranny of his own existence for a moment and then willed himself to do as she asked and write to Edelgard. He sat down at her writing desk, discovering one leg to be shorter than the others when it wobbled precariously.

Writing to Edelgard was perhaps one of Sylvain's least favourite exercises, surpassed only by the experience of _reading_ her letters. He supposed the last time he had written to her was during the war, perhaps two or three years into it. The last one had been a long letter, winding and rambling and taking multiple pages to get to a point he could have just expressed in a single line:

_ I am just a coward._

Sylvain sat at Ingrid's desk for a long time, twirling her pen and pondering what to say to Edelgard. It should have been easy to write an update, as there was plenty to say about the letters from Dimitri and the dagger and the dungeon and the general state of Fhirdiad, but he felt like he couldn't write about those when he just wanted to tell her how completely infuriating she was. Here he was in Fhirdiad, _again_, dealing with something he hadn't expected, _again_, and once more facing the reality that it wasn't going to be easy. How did he always end up in these situations? Why did he always try to do what made things easiest for others, even if it left him gritting his teeth and knuckling through?

Felix hadn't wanted to come here. Sylvain wondered if he was right to have wanted to stay away.

So he wrote:

_ When you went to Garreg Mach, did you see me across the commons and think, "There's the Gautier kid, I better make friends with—_

And then he crossed that out and wrote:

_ You obviously remembered seeing the Crest of Gautier as a child and then you decided that—_

Then:

_ Did you PLAN all of this?_

Then, finally:

_ Why the fuck are you like this? How do you make everyone dance around your master plan and not come out of it feeling like you're horrible? Do you even feel guilt? How do you look at how destructive this world is and keep doing it another day? Do you realize everything we try to do is just going to be undone by the people who come after us? Do you hate yourself?_

He dropped the pen hard, splattering ink across the page. It didn't really matter that he'd made a mess because he'd already wasted ink scratching out most of the above, but he felt like it had been ruined in that very moment regardless. Sylvain raked his hand through his hair, pushing his bangs out of his eyes, and he reread what he hadn't crossed out yet.

Sylvain thought he sounded like a lunatic. While his body was sitting at Ingrid's desk, expression neutral, heart pounding but his posture relaxed, his mind was divorced from him, somewhere else entirely. But he couldn't justify how she'd treated him, and how she continued to treat him.

Why couldn't she just _talk _to him?

Why couldn't _anyone_ just talk to him?

He picked up the pen and wrote:

_ I used to think it was crazy how much he hated you, but now I sort of get it. If he hated you he didn't have to think about hating himself._

Sylvain set the pen down. The desk wobbled again and in a pique of frustration he slammed his hand on the tabletop. He took the paper and folded it over a couple times until it made a wedge, and then he stooped to tuck it under the desk's uneven leg, and when that didn't quite solve it, he picked it back up and folded it over once more. That time it worked.

He decided he would try again in the morning, maybe when he had slept it off and was feeling more charitable. Maybe Ingrid could help him sound less raw. Maybe she would tell him off. Maybe he shouldn't be asking her for help with his basic responsibilities and do it himself. Huh. _There_ was a thought.

Sylvain didn't want to think about any of that for any longer, but he knew there wasn't anything he could do about that. He shuffled back to her bed and sprawled out on it. He imagined she wouldn't appreciate him laying all over her bed in the same clothes he'd marched around outside in for hours, touching horses and brushing up against people and carrying random women, but he told himself he'd be gone before she got back and she'd be none the wiser. He was just too tired to keep thinking about it.

He decided to close his eyes for just a minute.

A long creak had him opening his eyes again. He wasn't even aware of when he'd fallen asleep, but in that hazy moment listening to footsteps crossing the floor, he thought of Felix. He thought of Felix's slow, careful footsteps, and the sound of his breath in the dark, and all the nights they'd ever laid in bed together. He groped idly at his side and found no one. He remembered he wasn't in his own room; someone was watching him. Sylvain raised his head just enough to give his watcher a bleary look, and he found a lithe silhouette towering over him. Felix? No. Ingrid whispered "hey" and sat to pull off her boots.

"I'll go," he muttered, turning over.

"No, no, just stay," she sighed. Good. He didn't feel like moving, anyway, and he pushed his face into the pillow and meandered back towards sleep. He listened to her change once more and felt her peel back the covers best she could with him laying on most of them, and she slipped in beside him.

"How was your date?" he asked.

"It was really nice," she whispered. "We had drinks and went for a ride. The stars are really pretty tonight."

"Didn't get laid, though."

"Just as well, considering who we would have come back to," she said, flicking him in the nose. Her voice was lighthearted. Dreamy. She must have had a really nice date. Maybe she was tipsy, too. Sylvain chuckled low.

"I'd just pretend to sleep."

"Uh huh," Ingrid muttered. She turned over, her back to him, and Sylvain cozied in the slightest bit more. It was cool in the room without a blanket on, even fully dressed, but being close to another body was fine. They hadn't shared covers since they were kids, taking naps together after an exciting afternoon, the four of them piled together like a bunch of puppies. He felt her exhale deeply, but she groped for his arm and she pulled it around her. Sylvain felt immediately awake, apprehensive of being close to someone again, but he felt his shoulders loosen, the tension dissipating. He felt so relieved he could cry.

She murmured: "I think I'll see her again next week. She's really fun. Her name is Amélie."

"Well, then, I promise not to embarrass you with childhood stories when you let me meet Amélie."

Ingrid chuckled and patted his hand.

"I know you're going to do it anyway," she said. "But some stories are off-limits. Like the haircut thing."

"What about the time you and Felix brawled in horse shit and it got in your mouth?"

"Not that one, either."

"How about how you used to neigh at people as a kid when you were pissed?"

She laughed, and Sylvain grinned into her hair.

"Goodnight, Sylvain," she said.

"G'night," he murmured.

Ingrid had him back at the writing desk at dawn. She had risen to dress for her duties and discovered he'd left her nothing to send off, so she'd dragged him out of bed by his ankles and woken him up just like that — _thump_. His back hitting the floor didn't grant him anything better to say, just as sleep hadn't. It just left Sylvain feeling sore, and while Ingrid puttered around braiding her hair and polishing her armour to a glossy shine, he dragged himself through the dry process of explaining everything that had happened since he'd left Enbarr. It filled the page, but it didn't really explain how he _felt._

"It doesn't have to explain how you feel," Ingrid informed him. "If you don't want to pick a fight with her over letters, then just stick to the mission."

Sylvain imagined Ingrid had an easy time of it because Edelgard _liked_ her. Edelgard liked serious, dutiful people. People who threw themselves headlong into their duties, whether it be war or nation-building. Sylvain had spent so much of his life on his immediate friends and family that the idea of serving a whole nation seemed overwhelming. Ingrid had the capacity for that sort of thing, with her great, powerful heart. She was _made_ for the nation. What he had been made for? One man's ego?

"Yeah, but she needs to understand why I've been in Fhirdiad for over a month and done pretty much fuck all but take a dagger out of a box that wasn't even hidden _that_ well." Sylvain paused, shook himself off with irritation, and then added: "And if I don't say something, she's going to know I'm pissed off at her, and then it's going to be messy. You know, I wish she was just like other girls and just…"

He mimed getting slapped.

"Give my teeth a good rattle. That'd be easier."

"Sylvain, no. Don't say things like that."

"How the hell do you write to her _every single week?_"

"It's really not that hard," she said. "Are you still mad that she told Felix?"

"No!"

Perhaps a little, and only because he was looking for things to throw in her face. He wasn't about to arm her with that information, so he told Ingrid about the Crest of Gautier and what Linhardt had said. To his chagrin, Ingrid passed up being indignant on his behalf in favour of a shrug.

"I don't think it necessarily means anything," she said. "My house crest was on the Leicester Alliance coat of arms. The reason wasn't any deeper than our family having had a rift a long time ago. Maybe the Crest of Gautier has been there for centuries. You're overthinking it."

"Yeah, but King Lambert closed up the dungeon in our lifetime," Sylvain said. "Meaning he _knew_ about it. That means all of our fathers probably knew about it, too. They must have, especially if Edelgard was here."

Ingrid shook her head. She had started buckling on her greaves and sabatons.

"Even if they knew it was there, it didn't necessarily mean anything to them. But I can write to my father, if you'd like," Ingrid said. "I have a courier going to Galatea early next week."

Sylvain nodded.

"It's just so frustrating that Edelgard didn't say it to me," he said. "She knows I want nothing to do with Gautier. She _knows_ that, but she keeps _pushing._"

Ingrid shrugged again, a little helplessly this time.

"You know, I haven't always agreed with her either," Ingrid said. "But ultimately we wouldn't be where we are without her. And you know how she is; she's not going to push you further than what you can take. If you're willing to push _yourself_, she'll do everything in her power to take care of you."

Sylvain sighed and momentarily sank against the desktop. The tip of his nose brushed the letter.

"If we were having this conversation in person it wouldn't be a problem," Sylvain said. "I just can't _write_ it to her, Ingrid. I don't want her to read it and think I'm saying something I'm not."

"Can you write to Hubert?"

"Yeah, probably," he said, but he saw what she was getting at. He sat up straighter again. "And before you say it, it's not because she's a woman. It's because she's hard to read even in person."

"And Hubert isn't?"

Sylvain just shook his head. He didn't want to get into that. In his mind, it was just different. He could write to Bernadetta, or Annette, or even Dorothea, but he did not like to write to Edelgard, and even if he couldn't articulate why, it just settled on him in an ugly way.

"Well, I'd appreciate it if you tried," Ingrid said. "Edelgard's opinion of Fhirdiad — and all of Faerghus — is really important to me. I don't want her to think the situation here is poor."

"This is just between me and her, though," he said.

"It's really not," she said. She walked across the room and picked up her breastplate. Pegasus knights wore such light and simple armour that she had no trouble slipping it on and strapping herself in, which Sylvain envied greatly. "I think in five, maybe ten years, when Faerghus is back on its feet, she'll give us our independence back… but only if it's ready. And if she thinks the place is a mess… she won't."

Faerghus, independent again. That suggested she would need all of Faerghus' territories covered with trusted leaders, and Sylvain couldn't even begin to name who was leading any of its regions now, let alone how faithful they might be to the Emperor. Stability was hard even for a man looking after his homeland. An outsider like Edelgard would have a harder time still.

"Would it have a king again?" Sylvain asked.

"Maybe," Ingrid said. "But then they'd be like King Loog — the first of their line. Edelgard isn't about to put some distant relative of the Blaiddyd family back on the throne."

Sylvain nodded.

"What about you?" he asked.

She smiled at him like he was joking, but he gave her a pointed look and she stopped very readily to ponder it.

"I don't know if I want to lead," she said. "As long as Faerghus' borders are preserved and its people are respected, it doesn't have to be me. But… I don't think I would be opposed to the idea."

She trailed.

"I'm going to push myself, though. Even if I don't end up leading, I'd like to see what I'm capable of."

Sylvain liked the idea of Ingrid as a leader. She was uncompromising where it mattered most, after all. He watched her finish strapping her armour, and then she pulled on her gauntlets. She flexed her fingers as she settled them inside, the light glinting off the knuckles plates. When she noticed him watching her, she flashed him a smile — simple, patient. He hoped it was her leading Faerghus. She would make a lovely Queen.

He hoped he was capable of anything even remotely good as her.

"I'm going to go eat breakfast," she said. "Bring the letter down when you're done. I'll get them sent off by this afternoon."

Sylvain sighed and prepared the nib of his pen again.

It was going to be a long morning.

_If you're willing to push yourself…_

Sylvain was never a glutton for punishment, at least not relative to some of the other Faerghus men he knew. He had never served the king of a nation who had wiped out his people, for example. Nor had he fought for the church that had destroyed his life and given his life for it. He had never lived in the woods, or really anywhere that he didn't have a bed, hot meal and voluptuous company within a short distance. He had never eaten a rat, much less _asked_ to eat one after unjustly massacring twenty people in battle.

Punishment happened. Punishment was deserved. But he didn't linger in it. He didn't like to be hurt.

Or at least he thought he didn't.

If he didn't, why had he been living so terribly?

After dropping off his good-enough letter to Edelgard and training for another hour, the thin calluses on the sides of his hands thickening up and his thighs burning from doing a lot of low lunges, he decided he was going to challenge himself and go back to the dungeon.

Why not? It wasn't going to be worse. In fact, he thought it might actually be easier on his own, without anyone watching him.

The hole broken into the brick wall was unmanned, and the torch Linhardt had taken down was leant against the wall. No one was watching and he picked it up. There wasn't a lot of oil in it, but he imagined it was just enough for how long he planned to be there. He muttered a spell and the flame flickered to life. He let out a long exhale.

Edelgard thought he was so afraid of that place that he would run at its very mention. Well, she was wrong. He would have to _prove_ her wrong, and prove it to himself, too.

He held the torch into the hole and stepped in after it. Without Ingrid or Linhardt talking to him or the knights moving things around, it was much quieter, and he could hear the sound of something dripping rhythmically. He moved down a couple steps, just to where the ceiling started to rise above him, and he held the torch up high. He could see long, toothy glints coming from the ceiling, and though his heart-rate picked up, he quickly realized they were icicles. They dripped water. It was cold enough to freeze overnight, maybe, but by day they softened. He lowered the torch to skim the wall as he walked down. It didn't take him long to find a waterline staining the stone; when the snow melted it would flood, and then when the weather turned cold again, less water would seep from the upper layers.

It would be underwater by spring.

Mid-way down the stairs, he felt queasy, so he eased himself down to sit. He propped the torch against the wall, resetting it twice when it threatened to tip — the rounded bottom did not like to lean, designed for a life in a bracket. When he was satisfied that it wouldn't fall, he leant his elbows against his knees and let out a long, breath. The dripping continued. The pool below was completely still and silent. The smell was powerful, something mildewy and dark, but the longer he sat with it, the less he noticed it.

Was it really so bad that he couldn't tolerate it? Was this really something to be afraid of?

The well had been a long time ago.

_Gautier _felt like a lifetime ago.

How far was he from the crest of Gautier? What did it do? What was it there for?

Was the crest still here? Was it painted on the stone? Carved into it?

He swallowed his breath. His heart felt like it was absent entirely, instead leaving him with a confusing, low-level hum in his ribs. He opened another button on the front of his shirt just to slip his hand inside, against his chest. His palm settled over his heart, and under the tickle of hair and the clamminess of his skin, he felt it hammering nonetheless. It seemed like it would rip right out of his chest.

He glanced at the torch to be sure it wasn't about to tip over, and then he scooted forward on his ass like a child, down two more steps. It brought him two more steps closer to the pool below, but as far as he could see with the torch, he was still some distance away.

The last time he'd been in a place like this, he'd been thrown there. He put a hand over his elbow, imagining the phantom impact of banging it off the wall. His head hurt. His skin burned cold.

Was it better, to be there by choice?

A little, yeah.

"Sylvain?"

Sylvain yelled and shot to his feet. He very nearly tripped over the step, and he caught himself against the wall. Just that motion was enough to jostle the torch off its precarious balance, and it tipped. Sylvain grabbed the torch before it could hit the ground, the fire wobbling. His heart wasn't just in his throat — it felt like it had shot right out his mouth.

"Holy fucking shit," Sylvain called up the stairs. "Don't fucking do that!"

"Oops," Linhardt said.

Sylvain heaved a sigh and started up the stairs as quickly as he could. He reached the top and handed Linhardt the torch, and he ducked through the opening. Linhardt gave him a once-over.

"I thought you didn't like it down there."

"I don't," he said. He put on a smile. It was so tight he felt like his cheeks might crack. "What's going on?"

"Ingrid said I hurt your feelings yesterday," Linhardt said.

Sylvain was certain he did not say that, or express that, or admit to anything of that sort. It stung in a pleasant way that Ingrid had picked up on that anyway, and stung in a bitter way that she'd revealed it for him. He didn't want a smart person like Linhardt to think he was vulnerable.

"Don't worry about it," he said, regardless. He turned back to look into the darkness, and then he added, cheerily: "It's fine. I just didn't want to hear it at the time, that's all."

"Do you not want an apology, then?" Linhardt asked.

"No, I just…" Sylvain trailed, and then laughed. "It's fine. Thank you."

Linhardt looked at him like he was a moron, but then again, Sylvain didn't get the impression Linhardt really cared either way. There was a beat of silence between them and Sylvain extinguished the torch. He didn't think he'd be going back downstairs again today.

"So uh," Sylvain said. "Did you need something?"

"I do," Linhardt replied. "I was wondering if you could escort me."

"Escort you? Oh, you want to go into the city? Now?"

"That's what I said."

Sylvain wasn't sure if Ingrid would like that; he hadn't told her about storming into the city, and adding another trip out to his conscience didn't seem wise. On the other hand, Felix was out there. He figured with Linhardt he'd be okay. He'd been fine yesterday. Ingrid would understand if it was with Linhardt.

"Okay," Sylvain said. "Let me just get my things, and we'll go."

Linhardt smiled.

Sylvain wasn't going to miss another chance.


	33. Work

The last time Sylvain had shepherded someone through the streets of Fhirdiad, he'd been gripped by a constant vigilance. His shield had felt unusually heavy, and his arm had tired quite quickly; there was a persistent resistance against the Church within Fhirdiad, even five years into the war, and Sylvain and Dedue had lifted their shields quite often to block things being thrown at their young king — rocks and bottles and the like. Dedue's arm hadn't even trembled, not once, and Dimitri had been increasingly irritable. Sylvain had been too busy trying to keep their heads from getting caved in to talk him down, so he'd endured the humiliating experience of being snapped at by the very person he was trying to protect.

At the time, Sylvain had been furious. Not just for himself, or at Dimitri. He was furious at the idiots throwing junk. They had no idea who Dimitri was. They couldn't fathom his capacity for kindness, how much he had suffered, and how little of what the Archbishop wanted mattered to him. How could they accuse him of being a sycophant when he wanted the war to be over as much as anyone?

Now, it felt strange to follow Linhardt around from place to place with not a single soul paying them any mind. There was a great deal of waiting around and a mild (though not entirely unpleasant) boredom to it, as no one was looking for an opportunity to stab a simple researcher. He could think about Felix all morning, plagued with the idea that they could run into each other in the market. What would he say? What would he do? He didn't know, but he rehearsed a dozen variations on _I'm trying my best but you make it so fucking difficult _just in case.

Linhardt was spending the day going in and out of buildings, carrying samples to and fro, which meant Sylvain was left with a lot of time waiting around outside. It gave him ample opportunities to people-watch, and even better, socialize: while Linhardt was taking care of the second stop, Sylvain spotted a cute girl doing her shopping and he waved her down. It felt as familiar as slipping into an old skin, one that he'd outgrown in some very slight way, but it was comfortable to tease her for deciding to do her shopping on such a busy day. She gamely explained to him why it was _always _busy — people tended to buy what they needed when they needed it, so if they drank tea three times that day, they would go to the market and buy a scoop of tea leaves three times over. Any of them might need the money at short notice for anything else, so it was much more useful to have some coin than an extra scoop of tea, even if it saved them a trip to the market. Sylvain slipped her one of his last coins for extra sugar. _Save you a trip_, he teased, but when she invited him to shop with her, he politely declined. _Felix doesn't like sugar,_ he thought.

And then, when Linhardt took them to their second stop, he was approached by an older woman who asked if he was married. Her duty, she explained, as a surviving believer of the Church of Seiros, was to ensure that young people still married, as with so little in the way of housing, it had become quite common for couples to live together despite not having said their vows. Those who were struggling, Sylvain thought, were not likely to turn down work or spend a bit of money just to partake in a bit of formality… but this woman seemed to think it mattered. (He had to slink off when she started asking too many questions about his own sinfulness.)

Life in Fhirdiad was difficult — that was never something to question — but it did relieve Sylvain that no matter how difficult it was, people adapted. People endured. They still drank tea and they still had petty concerns and they still cared a great deal about family and getting married to the right people. That was just how the people of Faerghus were, and mere years under the command of the Empire hadn't changed that. He had no doubt that if Ingrid was right and Edelgard restored the Kingdom someday, the people would be ready to carry on right as they had left off when King Lambert had died, but stronger. Even hardier.

It wasn't a purely halcyon experience for everyone, of course. Case in point: Linhardt stepped out of the house he'd visited and was immediately nearly bowled over by a large man trying to get inside. Sylvain watched Linhardt complain and get completely ignored. He even _pouted._

"I just don't understand why anyone would want to live here," Linhardt said. "It's just so miserable all the time. The people are so rude. No one cares at all."

There was something about listening to other people criticize Fhirdiad that didn't sit right with Sylvain, perhaps even worse than the lack of manners. As a man of Faerghus, born and bred, Sylvain was allowed to have an opinion on it, even if he minced his words. Linhardt couldn't possibly understand what a Faerghus man might love about Faerghus, and why so many people would commit so much effort to it.

"You realize it wasn't always like this, right?" Sylvain replied, walking ahead of Linhardt so he could clear a path. Wouldn't want Linhardt's glass bones to shatter upon another impact, after all. On the other hand, he had no idea where they were going next, so playing leader wasn't exactly useful.

"Yes, but no one's making any effort to fix the fascinating infrastructure they'd started. After the fire would have been an excellent time to start anew, but everyone is just immediately building overtop."

Linhardt said this in a completely reasonable tone, and a look on his face that was completely dispassionate. Sylvain's big smile must have seemed insane by comparison.

"People gotta live somewhere in the meantime," Sylvain said. He shrugged as if it didn't matter. "And with what money, what expertise? I dunno, Linhardt. It's going to take a long time, but the people here are hardy. They'll put up with it until it happens."

"That seems to be the problem to me," Linhardt replied. "Until it happens! As though someone will wave a magic wand and the city will be fixed. Why not make the most important repairs first?"

"Uh… survival's more important?"

"Is this really _surviving?_" Linhardt asked. "Seems like a whole lot more effort than necessary when there are better climates for it..."

"People love Faerghus, Lin."

"Do they? Do _you?_"

"Fuck no!" Sylvain replied. "Not right now, anyway, but it's still my homeland, and in twenty years, maybe I will, and it's only going to get better if people stick around to _make_ it better."

(Since when was he planning on being around another twenty years?)

That was the kind of argument that carried on for quite some time, continuing even as reached the next stop, Linhardt still making points against him from the porch steps until Sylvain had to plead with him to just go inside and do whatever he needed to do. While Linhardt attended to things inside, Sylvain stood on the front steps and resumed his people-watching, letting the argument roll off his shoulders. He almost had to laugh. Despite all the complaints, Linhardt was doing more for Fhirdiad than he was, and _he _was the one defending it!

_Insanity!_

Still, Linhardt did scratch an itch in him for bickering that he'd been nagged by ever since Felix had left. It wasn't quite a perfect match — Felix knew the precise ways in which to be mean to him in a way that would sting but not wound him, and Felix tended to follow up with that smug little look, or—

Sylvain sank down to sit, and he chuckled to himself. Yeah, arguing with Felix was a lot more fun than Linhardt, and knowing he was within a walkable distance from Felix felt as relaxing as it was stressful. Even if Felix didn't want to see him, or didn't want to talk, it was comforting because it felt a little bit like it had at the beginning of his trip, all those months ago.

He would find Felix, and they would beat each other into pulp, because it was the only common tongue between them, and then they could heal.

Things could be okay.

They could be… friends.

Sylvain swallowed his breath and gazed out into foot traffic clogging up the street. He did not see Felix's face anywhere. They were friends. Like he was trying to convince himself: _Best friends._ He knew what it meant that _friends_ didn't feel like enough anymore. He knew that very deeply, because he had felt whispers of it before, and he knew where it went. That scared him.

"I need your help with something," Linhardt announced as he came back outside.

Sylvain turned in his seat. Linhardt's voice was very sober, but the expression on his face was even worse, and Sylvain withheld some pithy joke about making an effort to fix things.

"With what?" he asked.

"They're loyalists, so they won't let someone from the Empire into the house," Linhardt said.

Loyalists. Sylvain felt an impulse to flee for the border, and not stop running until he'd hit the southernmost tip of Fodlan. Maybe after that, he'd just swim. He did not think too poorly of them, as he thought they had a great many points about the Empire claiming their land, but he knew they hated him in turn, just as they hated much of the nobility. Captain de Gouges, he thought, was a loyalist — desperate for Faerghus's independence while also insisting the former nobility had never been representative of Faerghus as a whole. Sylvain could never say how much of that was true. He hadn't grown up amongst Faerghus's poor, and he only felt connected to them when he pretended to be someone else. For all he knew, there was fertile soil underneath the moral rot he'd grown up in. But regardless of who best represented the spirit of Faerghus, or whatever sympathies he might have for them, he was a nobleman, and the nobility had ruined their lives.

He genuinely believed that if he died in Fhirdiad, it wasn't going to be because of cholera, or because of drink, or even wrapping a rope around his own neck. It was going to be because a loyalist recognized him and decided not to pass up the chance. The incident with the refugees from Gautier had cemented that.

Still — since when did he fear death?

"Well," Sylvain replied. "That's too bad."

"Yes, because there is a very sick woman in there," Linhardt said.

Sylvain stood up and moved for them to leave, but Linhardt did not budge. Sylvain knew what was coming.

"Are you asking _me_ to go in there and deal with loyalists?" Sylvain asked. "You remember who I am, right?"

He truly hoped that was not what Linhardt was asking, but Linhardt did not deign to give him an answer, and so he was left with the crushing realization that yes, he was supposed to go in and talk to people who probably hated him. Sylvain raised his eyebrows.

"Didn't you just change sides at an inopportune time?" Linhardt said. "It's not that big of a deal."

"Yeah, 'just.' So you do it," Sylvain replied.

"Do you really think that this burdensome jacket is hiding a rippling physique that will allow me to fend off an angry family?"

Sylvain could have laughed if he wasn't so mortified.

"I am not doing that," he decided. "I'm out here without Ingrid's permission. This _has_ to end well. It's not going to end well if I end up in fisticuffs with someone because they think I'm a traitor to the Kingdom."

"You _are_ a traitor to the Kingdom," Linhardt replied, and Sylvain imagined knocking him out. "But by _decree_, they must allow me in to assess the issue."

"Yeah, but they aren't going to let me in _either_," Sylvain said. "I'm not very well liked, Lin. Why the hell do you think I was living in the Empire? What the––actually, fuck this. Why am I explaining this? It's not going to happen."

"Because you aren't paying attention to what I am telling you," Linhardt replied, and this time Sylvain really felt like Linhardt thought he was an idiot. Of course he knew why illness had to be attended to — that didn't make it _easy._ Linhardt continued on: "You think I am socially inept, rather than simply overseeing the safety of every other person in this neighbourhood. Perhaps this city. I think this disease is spread by the water, and that woman is one of a number of cases that has cropped up in the surrounding area this week. If I don't find out where that woman has been drinking, I cannot prove anything."

"And?"

Linhardt's eyebrows furrowed in frustration.

"And if I cannot prove it, then I will have no proof of what moves this illness, and then dozens if not hundreds more will grow ill. Sylvain, do this. They won't necessarily _recognize_ you."

_You_ are_ deeply, deeply, DEEPLY socially inept,_ Sylvain thought, but he did not say that, because he wanted to talk Linhardt down, not prompt more bickering. Also, he had a point, and something did have to be done. Sylvain wasn't sure if he'd be recognized or not, but he supposed he'd very quickly. He was often good with people, and very agreeable. Maybe he could convince them instead of browbeat them, and even beyond charisma, he was a man of _Faerghus_. He had a far better chance than Linhardt.

"If it's life and death and has to be done," Sylvain relented, "I'll do something. But if they realize who I am, I'm _out._"

The house was very narrow, and five years ago it might have been home to one family in two rooms, but now it seemed to have been converted into at least four tighter spaces for multiple families. It made Sylvain feel like a giant crammed into a dollhouse; he could barely squeeze down the hall without bumping an elbow on some piece of salvaged furniture. It smelled very foul and he was sure silence had never existed in that space. From the door he could hear crying from deeper in the house, and terse voices on top. Sylvain averted his eyes politely from the poor souls huddled in the makeshift partitions, following the hallway all the way to the back. Linhardt crept behind him, holding a handkerchief over his nose; Sylvain wondered if all the houses he went in were like this. The doorway awaiting them was ajar, and Sylvain knocked on the frame.

"Go away!" a woman called.

"I just want to talk," Sylvain said, which was something he had said through doorways a great many times in his life, but never for the sake of something like this. He peered through the gap in the door and found himself eye to eye with a young woman with dark hair. Sylvain smiled. She did not.

"Who are _you?_" she asked, clearly having expected Linhardt.

"My name's Sylvain," he said. He glanced over her shoulder but he couldn't see much, so he just leaned into the gap in the door and fixed his eyes on her again. She was cute, but he was sure she didn't care about that right now, as she was very teary and red-faced. "This moron behind me asked me to come talk to you. Can I talk to you?"

"Not if you're here to convince me to let that Adrestian in," she said.

"I'm not," he said. Not perfectly true, of course, but he wasn't going to _force_ anyone, no matter how hard Linhardt breathed down his back. "Promise. I was bred and raised in Faerghus, just like you. I get it."

“Oh good,” the woman said. “Sir, the Adrestians use human bodies for experimentation; I will not have them take my mother away!”

Sylvain glanced over his shoulder, and Linhardt avoided his gaze as swiftly as if Sylvain was lobbing fireballs his way.

“Where'd they get that impression, Lin?” Sylvain muttered.

“I wanted a sample,” Linhardt replied, defensively. “I don't need to take her away. But if I don't at least see, I can't test my hypothesis. Look at this place. They'll be ill bef—“

“Okay, you're not helping,” Sylvain said, tersely, cutting him off. “Why don’t you go outside? I’ll talk to them without you.”

"Fine, fine," Linhardt relented, moving away. He did not leave entirely, but he at least retired to the other end of the hallway.

Sylvain met the girl's eyes again. She stood in his way like she meant to turn him away, but Sylvain just paid her a polite smile and stepped into the room. She moved to stop him but she was much too late; he closed the door behind him. It creaked loudly, and he loathed to do it, as the smell within was atrocious and it was too cold to open the windows. He could tell that made her a little nervous, but he didn't mean her any harm. He hoped she knew that.

For a moment, no one said anything. Sylvain counted the others in the room. There were four kids piled together on the couch, all of them quiet with tear tracks down their faces, their bottom lips quivering. The bigger ones held the smaller ones. Sylvain thought the young woman must be their older sister, as they were too close in age to be hers.

Sylvain dared look at the mother next. She was laid out on the bed under a great mound of tattered blankets, lost in a fitful sleep. He was glad to have committed and witnessed so much violence in his life that the sight of her did not shock him or prompt some ill reaction, as the woman’s face was contorted in pain, and her flesh seemed like it had been drained of all moisture. A wreath had been wrapped around her head. Dried parsley. A poor person's alternative to lavender, especially in this climate.

“I'm sorry about your mother," he said, finally. "It's awful, being sick like that."

The woman choked out some sound between a sob and a laugh.

"What? You don't care. You're only here because of that Adrestian."

"I'm not like him," Sylvain said, pointedly. "And I think we both know he isn't going to leave until we come to a compromise. I'm much better to talk to, and probably easier on the eyes, too."

Debatable. He'd gotten a little scruffy again, but he liked to think that he at least had a friendlier face than Linhardt, as well as bigger arms to cry in. The woman didn't seem too interested in that, however. She had her arms wrapped around herself tightly, and the waistband of her apron was rolled; Sylvain bet all his money that she had a knife tucked in there. That didn't concern him much, but he did feel compelled to calm her down nonetheless. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.

"I don't bite. Promise."

She scoffed and snatched it from his hands, immediately drying her eyes and then blowing her nose into it. Sylvain let her have a moment, leaning against the door.

“So what's the big deal with a couple of questions?” Sylvain asked. "You don't like Adrestians, fine, they're a bunch of assholes. But he's only trying to help."

"I don't need his help," she replied. “When my mother passes, the Adrestians won't let us have a funeral. She will be dumped in a mass grave just like when carthorses are dragged from the gutters. He and his sympathizer friends don't care.”

"And they think we're harsh in Faerghus, huh?"

The woman narrowed her eyes.

"Don't patronize me," she said. "You're working for them. You can't come here and tell me they're trying to help for nothing in return. They want my compliance. They _won't_ have it."

"Easy now, I'm not here to fight," he said. "Nobody's asking you to agree with the Empire. Hell, I don't agree with the Empire. I wouldn't be here without pay, okay? But that guy out there, he's trying to figure out where the disease is coming from, how it spreads, something like that — and he thinks if he talks to your mother, he'll find out something that can help prevent this from spreading. That's all."

"What will you do if I refuse?" she asked. There was a hint of a threat there, and her hand settled on her ribs, at the ties of her apron. "Call the knights?"

“Nah," Sylvain said. "If you really insist on it, I won't stop you. But I think even if you hate them, there's nothing to be gained by letting your fellow countrymen fall ill."

They both fell silent. Sylvain let it linger. She leaned back against the edge of a table, her teeth grit and her eyes full of fury, and so he looked to the children. They were very small, too young to know or care about politics. Some of them hadn't yet been born when Sylvain had last stood on a battlefield; they certainly didn't know a Faerghus any different than the one controlled by the Empire. Just the same, their disdain for the state of the world seemed evident when Sylvain smiled at them and not a single child smiled back. What did they care? Their mother was dying.

He thought about his own mother, and when she had died. He thought about these children all huddled together, and his own moments in the day after his mother's death. He couldn't remember what he'd done then, or how he'd felt. It eluded him, as many things about that time did. He just remembered looking at Miklan from across their mother's deathbed. Miklan's mouth was uncharacteristically still, biting back something hard enough that Sylvain could almost _see_ the pressure headache blooming from Miklan's clenched jaw.

"I know some Adrestian poking around your business is the worst when your mother is about to pass,” Sylvain said to the young woman, finally. He kept his voice light, friendly. “I'd want to kick him out too, if I were you. But if you give a shit about Faerghus, you'll set that aside and give him two minutes of your time so more of our people don't die, huh? Because the King and the Church certainly didn't look out for us, either, or for them."

He gestured at the kids.

"Very inspiring," the young woman said, sharply, and her eyes roved up and down him. It did not feel even remotely like the look most young women gave him. Sylvain questioned his dress; not exactly the fine furs he would have worn years ago, but furs just the same. Did it mark him as nobility? Could she figure out who he was? She looked away. "Tell him to be quick about it."

"Alright," he said, letting out a breath he hadn't thought he was holding. "I'm sorry for what's happened. Honestly."

She just waved him away. Sylvain didn't need to make her endure even one more second of him in a difficult time, so he gave the kids one last glance and let himself out. Linhardt was no longer in the hall, so Sylvain just made his way out into the front. He craved fresh air more than anything, and stepping out the front door.

"Will she do it?" Linhardt asked. He still had the handkerchief over his face. Sylvain scoffed and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "Go on. Quickly."

Though Sylvain might have liked to call it quits there, Linhardt still had one last stop to make even after collecting his information, at some outpost for the knights. Sylvain waited just outside for that, shaking off the feeling of having had some minor impact on the state of Faerghus just as he shook off the cold. The little shelter erected for the knights had a single window through which Sylvain could see the back of Linhardt's head. Periodically, he glanced back at the people traversing up and down the street.

When Linhardt stepped out, Sylvain felt himself being levelled with an appraising look.

"Ugh," Linhardt said.

"Ugh what?"

"Just… _ugh._ The brooding! Always brooding. It makes me tired just looking at you."

"I'm not brooding," Sylvain protested. "I'm thinking."

"And I'll bet whatever you're thinking about is exhausting," Linhardt replied.

Sylvain opened his mouth to dispute that, but at that very moment, his eyes landed on a familiar turquoise hood moving through the crowd. He felt himself immediately drawn in that direction, his feet carrying hopefully after the hood.

"Can you wait here for one minute?”

“Huh?” Linhardt relented with a grumble: "Just one is fine, I suppose."

Sylvain would not have been surprised if the bastard took him to mean one literal minute, but he said his thanks anyway and darted off through the crowd after Felix, his heart in his throat and his high hopes a wicked thing. Waiting for Linhardt's permission had given Felix a minute but palpable distance on him, and Sylvain had to push his way through crowds to catch up with him. And Felix wasn't particularly tall, either, so sometimes the crowd swallowed him up, and each time it happened, Sylvain felt a curl of fear that he wouldn't find him again, and then relief when he _did—_

“Felix!” Sylvain called, louder than truly necessary. "Hey!"

A couple people turned, and one of them was Felix.

Or rather:_ not_ Felix.

"Me?" said the young man, who was actually blond under his hood. He was also not as inviting to look at. A lump formed at the back of Sylvain's throat.

"Naw," Sylvain replied, reflexively. "Sorry, thought you were someone else!"

Embarrassed, he slunk back to where Linhardt was waiting. Linhardt did not look terribly impressed, but he surprisingly didn't fuss about the exact time Sylvain was gone after all. Instead he asked:

"Is that why you came with me today?" Linhardt asked. "To find Felix?"

Sylvain thought about denying it. He didn't see what the point in telling Linhardt would be other than to give himself one more scolding. Still, it occurred to him that Linhardt might actually help, too.

“Yeah, about that,” Sylvain said. “You wouldn't happen to have any business at the School of Sorcery ever, would you?"

"Not often," Linhardt replied.

Sylvain wasn't sure if that made him more disappointed, or if he was still coming down off the hope that he'd seen Felix. How many days would he have to spend shadowing Linhardt before that happened? Sylvain wasn't sure if he liked that idea. On one hand, it meant getting out of the castle more. On the other hand, Linhardt wasn't exactly his ideal company.

Maybe Ingrid would let him just be a knight again, and he could slip off the first chance he got. Being a knight wouldn't be terrible. He wouldn't enjoy the work, but he'd enjoy the company. Knights tended to carouse more than clerks or academic folks, and they had a worldliness that Sylvain was drawn to.

But on second thought, maybe not. He'd didn't want to go back to being that kind of man, and he'd remembered Captain de Gouges, anyway. It also probably wasn't wise to pursue a career just for the purposes of squandering it.

“Brooding again! I suppose if you wanted to go, I could spare a bit of time another day."

Sylvain immediately decided that Linhardt wasn't so bad.

"Really?" He smiled. "But… when's the next time you're going to need me out here? I'm hoping that when we get back today, Ingrid will see that I can be useful out here, but if she doesn't, I'm not going to be able to go out with you again."

"We can find some excuse. Why don't you just go now?"

"What about your last stop?" he asked.

"I don't care," Linhardt said. "Really. It's nothing dire, just checking in on a woman who miraculously recovered from her illness. I can talk to her tomorrow, seeing as she isn't dead."

"Oh? Really," Sylvain said. "But you want to go?"

"Sure," Linhardt said. "I've read most of the books in the castle at this point. I wouldn't mind seeing if Annette will lend me something new."

"Okay," Sylvain said. That feeling from a few days ago was seeping back into his veins, right from his heart to the tips of his fingers. He'd wanted to storm over and beat down the door and drag Felix home to him. Beg him. Promise him anything, everything, for one more chance.

With it right in front of him, suddenly he had to consider what he'd do if Felix said no.

"We won't be able to stay long, though," Linhardt said. "Even without my last stop, there's still curfew to consider."

"Hmm."

"Oh, I know," Linhardt said. "What if I warp you there and just sit in that cafe across the street for a while, and you pick up some books for me and come back? Then you won't lose time, and I won't have to go anywhere."

Sylvain wondered how he'd find his way back, but he supposed it wouldn't be hard, as long as he was quick about it.

"Sure," he said.

"Alright," Linhardt said.

Linhardt raised a hand. A green light alit below Sylvain's feet, and he barely registered the sigil on the air before a strange sensation consumed him from the toes up.

"Hey—"

The flash of light was blinding, but that was nothing on the all-body feeling of ceasing to exist, and then existing once more, somewhere else, somewhere entirely different. As Sylvain blinked and steadied himself, he wondered how Hubert did that all the time without getting nauseous. He thought that Edelgard must have gotten a lot of puke on her shoes when Hubert was first learning.

"Fucking warn a guy, first, huh?" Sylvain muttered to himself, and he steadied himself against the gate that towered over his head. He looked up at it. The School of Sorcery. Very convenient, Sylvain thought. He peered through the gate. The sliver of the school that Sylvain could see was tall and stately, and the rest was obscured by pine trees. Those trees, and the building they hid, were small miracles: Sylvain could only assume that they had survived the fires virtue of the mages inside.

He tried to open the gate and it did not budge, not even a bit, even though it did not look unreasonably heavy, and the hinges did not look particularly strong or tight. Magic, he supposed.

"Hello?" he called in. There was no gatekeeper but he could see someone at a window upstairs. He pressed himself as close to the gate as he could stand, not wanting to freeze his cheeks against the cold metal. He called again. The person at the window was looking at him, and then they left.

Sylvain waited.

After a few minutes, an elderly man came to the door. He walked very slowly and with a cane, so he came down the walkway at a pace befitting his age but wholly intolerable to Sylvain's schedule. Sylvain waited still. He didn't know how long it would take him to get back, but he wanted to spend as much time as possible inside that Felix would allow.

(Though, Sylvain thought, he still planned to kick Felix's ass. Fighting was Felix's language. Maybe it was the only way to get through to him and prove how serious he was, and then talking could come after.)

"What's your business, sir?" the man asked, when he finally came within reach of the gate.

“I’m an old friend of Annette’s,” he said. “I was hoping I could pay her a visit.”

"I'll check," the old man said.

Without another word, he then strolled off and back inside. Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty. Sylvain shivered in the cold and wondered if Ingrid had realized he was gone yet. A book would placate Linhardt, but Ingrid wasn't going to be pacified by a gift. He almost considered asking Annette for a note — that might make for a good laugh, at the very least.

Sylvain glanced up at the sun. Maybe an hour and a half to sundown. More than enough time to get back, as long as he was quick about his business.

Finally, the old man returned, and with a wave of his hand and a glyph of light, the gate opened, the bands of metal unweaving from each other to give Sylvain passage. He beckoned for Sylvain to follow, and Sylvain felt very awkward shortening his strides and reining himself in to not take off ahead. The old man made polite small talk — mostly about how good it was that Annette saw so many friends — and Sylvain responded with an equally polite interest. His mind was elsewhere; he was more focused on squaring his shoulders, checking that the rest of him was ready for what could be an ugly fight. Felix was a much more practiced fighter than he was, but he was bigger. Maybe if he was persistent enough—

“I should have gotten your name,” the old man said. “I just told her you were a tall ruddy fellow."

"It's alright," Sylvain said. "She'll know who I am the second she sees me. She'll know why I'm here."


	34. Felix, Once More

Sylvain saw Annette before Annette saw him.

Part of him had hoped that he'd see Felix first, actually, because he already felt a twinge of guilt that he was not here to reconnect with a girl he'd long known as a friend. Under better circumstances, he would have liked to have gone with Ingrid and Felix to have tea and catch up on the years. (They'd gloss over Sylvain's embarrassing ones, of course.) Maybe in that alternate future, he and Felix would be together, and it wouldn't be awkward because Sylvain wouldn't have known that Felix and Annette had once been lovers. He'd enjoy his time, oblivious, until Felix saw fit to tell him. To include him.

Instead, Sylvain watched Annette by his lonesome. She was bent over a student’s work and helping him with some magic concept; she spoke with encouragement and wild gesticulations, and twice she had to re-tuck her hair behind her ear. Sylvain lingered in the doorway, content to watch her at work. She looked happy. The student happened to look up, and then Annette did.

“Sylvain?” she said, surprised. Surprise felt natural. Some part of him scarcely felt recognizable even to himself.

“Hey,” he smiled.

She crossed the classroom to him and he opened his arms. It was a reflex he could not help, though he inwardly prepared himself to be struck. She sank into his chest instead, her arms tight around his waist. She barely came up to his armpits, so he had to stoop a little to hug her in turn. Relief flooded him, right up to his hairline.

“Took you long enough to come visit!” she scolded him.

“I was under house arrest,” Sylvain replied. He paused. “Uh, still kind of am. Don’t tell Ingrid I came here.”

“So now I have to be complicit in this?!” But she laughed just the same, high and musical. “I won’t tell! I’m just glad to see you!”

She squeezed him tighter. She had a hug that made Sylvain feel like his eyeballs were going to pop out of his head. He squished her back, and she didn't even hesitate to double down and crush his ribs in turn. He made a noise that didn't sound like it'd come from his own mouth. Annette laughed the entire time.

“What have you been up to, on house arrest?” Annette asked.

“Wrapping up some old stuff for Edelgard,” Sylvain said. He pondered how he might ask her about Felix without making her feel like an afterthought. "Other than that it's a lot of sleeping, training and waiting around. Not really riveting stuff."

"Well, it's good to have you back in Fhirdiad," Annette said.

She made Sylvain feel more welcome than he had in years. The feeling of being wanted made him warm. He smiled at her and tucked her hair behind her ear again.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll come to visit more often. I promise."

"Good!"

A flicker of silence fell between them. Sylvain glanced at the student, who was trying not to watch them even as he waited for his professor to return, but his pen wasn't moving across the page. Sylvain let out a scoff of a laugh. Students never liked to see their teachers as people, did they?

"Oh—do you mind if I finish up with my student here?" Annette asked. "Then we can sit and catch up."

"Sure," Sylvain said. He glanced at the window. His heart picked up.

The sky was starting to turn pink.

Sylvain wandered up and down the hall for a bit. It must have been a free day for the students because the classrooms were largely empty, save for the odd enthusiast getting ahead on their studies. It was not unlike Garreg Mach, at least in that regard, but it was much nicer, and more prestigious because it came from money alone. It was a sprawling old manor, converted into a boarding school for promising young mages by its former master of the household. The walls were panelled with oak, and the floors polished hardwood, both imported from Adrestia just as its focus on magic had been.

In another lifetime, Sylvain might have been a student there himself. He had harboured a childhood interest in magic, and there had been some suggestion by his father's colleagues that he would excel in it. Unfortunately for Sylvain, the sons of Gautier were born for the defence of the border and couldn't hope to entertain an interest in anything else. Sylvain was to be a knight, and a knight he had been for a time, just as his father had asked of him.

For a moment, he dared to imagine himself as an alumni of these hallowed halls, strolling down them to witness another generation of mages come into their own. He tried to imagine being a man who had never so much as glimpsed the now-Emperor in person. He supposed in this lifetime, for him to be free to do as he wished, Miklan would have had the crest. Miklan would be the one sitting with King Dimitri at his war table. Miklan would be happier, and perhaps, so would he.

Sylvain imagined himself sent to Derdriu to help the Alliance fend off the Empire. He would be a curiosity, maybe, as the Kingdom Army did not generally rely on magic. He imagined himself under Edelgard's axe, nameless and faceless to her. Maybe under Ingrid's instead — she was always a talented mage-killer, sweeping in on great white wings and then making a swift retreat.

Or Felix. He imagined Felix striking him down. Enemies instead of lovers.

Sylvain set that aside. It hadn't seemed realistic until that point; it would be impossible to be happy without Felix in his life.

The lump in his throat dislodged when he heard the tight snap of a door closing. He turned and paced back towards Annette, who beamed at him in a way that felt impossible to not return.

"So what does Edelgard have you doing?" Annette asked. She had a book clasped to her chest. She looked so genuinely curious that Sylvain decided he wasn't going to be too secretive about it. She was a friend, wasn't she?

"Errands," Sylvain replied. "She had me pick up a dagger that had belonged to her, and now I'm exploring the dungeons on her behalf."

"The dungeons?" Annette repeated, and she made a face. She gestured for him to follow her. Sylvain chuckled a little as he let his eyes drop to the floor. Annette had to take four steps to every two he took.

"Yeah. It's been a bit of a predicament because they're flooded. They'll probably be fully underwater come spring." Something occurred to him. “I hate to sound like I came here to ask a favour, but just now I thought, hey, we know a genius mage who might be able to help...”

“Of course,” Annette said. They took a hard turn and she made a gesture for him to follow her upstairs. “I’d have to take a look, but maybe I could help drain it out. The School does that for the city every spring, you know. When the snow melts and the rainy season starts, everything gets backed up.”

Not surprising. Sylvain had known mages in the city to keep water from freezing in the wells and the pumps throughout the winter, but the Northern end of Faerghus had never had much in the way of underground structures. The ground was too cold to dig through most of the year, and too rainy otherwise, so most underground structures were simple cellars inside houses for food storage, and kept tightly sealed. Those being flooded was particularly grim in a time of so much poverty.

"Well, I'd be thrilled if you could," Sylvain said. Assuming she was still interested after he punted Felix around, anyway. Women never really understood that about men, but then again, Sylvain didn't either. It never seemed to solve any of his problems, but if it worked for Felix, he'd do it.

"I'll come by in a couple days, then," Annette replied.

"Wonderful."

She moved up a couple steps ahead of him and stopped, so he did too. He glanced past her for a second; the great staircase had a window at one of the landings, and the sky was very pink, almost veering orange. Annette tilted her head curiously and asked:

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Sylvain shrugged. It was funny to be eye-to-eye with her; her head was so small. "Why?"

"You seem nervous," she said. "It's okay, you know. I'm sure Ingrid won't mind you being here."

_Ingrid?_ She thought this was about Ingrid? Sylvain had never known Annette to have a good face for lying, and she seemed a little unconcerned about having Sylvain and Felix under one roof. It hadn't even seemed to cross her mind, either. What the hell was he supposed to make of that?

Wait.

Had Felix not _told _her?

"I have to be back by sundown," he admitted. "I didn't think it would take me this long to get here. I thought I'd have more time."

"Oh," Annette said, a little alarmed. She put her hands to her mouth and twisted on the spot to look at the sky, and then back at him, a _lot_ alarmed. "Oh _no! _Why didn't you just tell me that? I'm sorry, I didn't even think about the curfew — do you want to just stay the night? We have plenty of space, and if Ingrid is mad, I can talk to her."

"As much as I'd love to say yes, I really should just say hello to Felix and go," Sylvain replied. "But I promise I'll be back, and you and I can catch up properly."

"If you're sure," Annette relented. She picked up the pace again, her little shoes making soft pats on the floor. "Ugh! Are you all stressed out about it? That kind of thing makes me stressed out, just thinking about it."

"It'll be fine. I'm just trying to be mindful," Sylvain said, and he was glad that it came out cavalier, relaxed, even when the rest of him was gearing up for a fight. "Besides. Being stressed is _your_ thing."

"You're the worst," Annette said, and she pouted a little. "But I'm glad you're looking out for her. Ingrid really worries about you, you know?"

"Yeah…"

He wondered what Ingrid would say if he had to tell her, to her face, what he'd gone to the School to do. She wouldn't like it, certainly, and it gave him no small helping of guilt knowing he was going to do it anyway. He reassured himself by remembering that Ingrid, no matter how much she'd grown, was also no stranger to solving things with violence. She wouldn't like it, but she would understand it.

"We had a spare room amongst the students, so Felix is staying in with them. Don't make fun of him, okay?"

As they went down the hall, Sylvain peeked into any open doors, noting the way various students had decorated their rooms. The rooms were a fair bit smaller than the monastery dormitories, but he only needed to see a few laughing students to feel nostalgic for his own time traipsing up and down similar halls, with either a girl on his arm or with a friend scolding him as he laughed it off. Simpler times. Happier times.

Annette led him right to the end of the hall, and she knocked and then entered without waiting. Sylvain pondered what it would be like brawling in a dormitory room. He pondered it right until Annette said "Guess who's here!" in a sunny voice, and then Sylvain stepped into the doorway and found himself looking at Felix.

Felix was sitting on his bed, and he turned his head very sharply.

Felix looked instantly _afraid._

Not afraid of Sylvain, certainly — Sylvain felt that somehow, deep in his bones. He knew what it looked like to be afraid of a person. What it felt like. But Felix certainly was afraid of something, and Sylvain watched the words tumble unspoken down the back of Felix's throat. Instead, his mouth hung open, his eyes searching.

Sylvain's fantasy of fighting Felix cleared like the clouds.

If Felix couldn't tell him how he felt, and then couldn't tell Annette, and couldn't even talk to him now, then…

"Just came to say hi," Sylvain said, with a little wave. Sylvain met Felix’s eyes for a moment, and then he smiled and turned his attention back to Annette. "We'll catch up later. I promise."

"What are you doing here?" Felix asked. He was one breath away from a stammer. Sylvain itched to look back but he didn't. Annette was immediately confused, and Sylvain felt the tension on the air like a garrotte around their necks. She looked between the two of them.

"Another time. I have to get back before sundown," Sylvain said.

He turned on his heel and left.

"See you?" Annette called after him, confused. Sylvain heard her say something to Felix, something questioning, and Felix muttering something in turn.

He itched to look back, but he didn’t want to give Felix the satisfaction, so he plucked up his resolve and kept his eyes forward.

“Hey,” Felix called. And then, clearly bothered: “_Sylvain!_”

Sylvain flinched but he kept going. He could hear Felix following him, his footfalls long and hurried. He only stopped when Felix grabbed him by the sleeve. Sylvain glanced at the offending hand, and irresistibly, his gaze slid to Felix’s face. His brows were furrowed but his mouth seemed unsure. _Fuck,_ it felt good to have Felix meet his eyes. Gazing into them was a heady reminder that Felix had feelings for him, and it took every ounce of Sylvain’s willpower to not give in and stay. To not give in and…

No, he was trying to be different.

He_ wasn't _going to kiss him.

“You’re just going to say hello and leave? You’re not mad that I’m here?”

Sylvain bit his tongue for a moment, and then he said: “Nope. Maybe I was at first, but now? Nope.”

“Why not?” Felix demanded.

“You wanted to go,” Sylvain said. “You said a million times that you didn’t want to stay, so I'm respecting your wishes.”

"Then why are you here?"

It felt tempting to point out that Felix had made such a stink about going to Fhirdiad at all, but that felt like an unfair thing to throw. He turned and walked off again. He didn’t get far; Felix grabbed him again, and this time he didn’t just dig his heels in. He tugged Sylvain around and then planted a hand on his belly and _shoved_ him. Sylvain’s back hit some poor student's door, and the whole thing rattled ominously. Felix held him there by his navel.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “You’re _okay_ with that?”

“Oh, I’m not okay with it,” Sylvain said, but he said it casually. “It sucks. But you don’t want to hear me talk, because it’s just talk, right? So I’ll see you in the spring, Fe. Like we said.”

He moved to go, but Felix only let him get six inches off the wall before he shoved him back into place, harder this time. Sylvain felt the heel of Felix’s hand hit the top of his belt. He gripped Felix’s wrist like he might pry him off, but he lingered. He wasn’t sure if it was Felix’s pulse or his own that he felt. Their eyes locked, Felix daring him to try again, but Sylvain just smiled. Sylvain wasn't going to give him a fight. Felix might have known that; he wound his fingers into Sylvain’s shirt.

“You,” Felix said, low and filthy like a curse word. “You...”

“Me what?”

There was no answer. Felix let him go and backed off a step. Sylvain stayed where he was. Both were silent, and Felix looked away. Sylvain swallowed his breath and looked down at their feet, just for an instant, and then back to Felix.

_This is such bullshit, _he thought. _We should just be together._

Sylvain stood up properly, the door behind him settling back on its hinges. Felix was very still when Sylvain reached out to palm his shoulder, and feeling bold, he let that hand slide up the side of Felix’s neck, settling on his cheek. Felix didn’t move. Felix didn’t even breathe.

“So maybe I should have dropped down on my hands and knees and said, verbatim, _Felix, please come to Fhirdiad with me, for me, to be with me, because I need you,_” Sylvain murmured. Felix didn’t move. Sylvain ran his thumb over Felix’s cheek. Fuck, he could kiss him. He _could_. His voice came out lower, a little rattled: “And yeah, I could have reached out to you more. I could have thought about you more. But you knew I wanted you there, and you turned me down every time I brought it up... so I’m thinking... "

He paused. Felix just waited.

“I’m thinking maybe you’ve got some things to work out too. Maybe it’s you that needs time to think about what you want. So I’m going to give it to you.”

He pulled away. Felix leaned forward a little but seemed to catch himself, and his lips parted to say something but he bit that back, and when Sylvain turned to walk away, Felix pawed at the air but didn’t catch him.

It took every bit of Sylvain’s fortitude to not linger. To not sweep Felix into his arms and apologize, or grovel, or beg Felix to come back to the castle with him. His entire being screamed _stay_, screamed _please._ His feet felt like bricks, his legs numb logs, his heart a steel ingot. But he _went_.

Felix called after him, his voice a great burst that felt like it could have come out of Sylvain’s own mouth:

“I really did mean to leave, you know!”

“I know,” Sylvain said, but he kept going. He didn’t really know, but he felt it was true. Felix followed him at a distance.

“I just couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t go back to you and just— and just _say_ that I—“

Sylvain stopped and so did Felix.

“Why not?” Sylvain asked.

He turned and found Felix wide-eyed. Some shadow had swarmed him and fled with his dignity. Felix said nothing. Sylvain felt his entire soul wrench, sheared in two directions, between him and Felix. Felix still said nothing.

Sylvain shrugged.

“Like I said. See you in the spring.”

He left. It hurt. It felt right.

The cold air hit him like a brick wall, but it did little to break his stride. He didn't even bother buttoning his coat. He felt like an oven, heat radiating off him with such intensity that he'd surely melt if it wasn't bled off into the air. He drew a sharp breath and found himself shouting to the sky:

"Fuck! Fuck me! Fuck Felix!"

He felt stupid, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Birds shot out of the trees, their black wings silhouetted against the sky. It was a deep red, with the heavens above bleeding more and more purple by the minute. Sylvain did not stop to sheepishly check if anyone in the school was watching him from the windows; he did not have time for that.

He was going to be in a great deal of trouble if he wasn't back at the gates before nightfall.

He had some vague idea of where Linhardt was waiting in the cafe, but as he had been warped the rest of the distance, he could not be certain of where he was starting from. Would Linhardt even still be there, he wondered? Or would he have given up on Sylvain's return, figuring it wasn't worth waiting around and risking getting locked out himself?

No, Sylvain decided. He had a responsibility to Linhardt, and it would be awful to leave Linhardt behind if he'd waited.

He went out into the street at a jog. The streets near the school were lined with family homes, almost all of them in need of obvious repairs, and light from candles bled from the windows. In one of the few with no curtains drawn to ward off the cold, a woman rocked a baby in her arms. In another, a couple was arguing, circling each other. Neither seemed worth disturbing. Sylvain let out a deep breath and carried on, the sky growing dimmer and the lights inside feeling brighter by comparison. There wasn't anyone on the streets anymore; the few people he spotted outside left their porches when he approached. A lone man he called out to for directions just pointed an arm, which Sylvain dutifully followed.

If they were only a little late, it'd be okay, he reasoned.

But the sky was an inky blue by time Sylvain got into more familiar streets, and he realized he'd walked quite some distance east when south might have gotten him back faster. He had to backtrack a bit more, this time through more familiar streets. The market was closed up, with only a few sellers lingering, all busy packing up their wares. It was starting to get bitterly cold.

Sylvain started to run.

When he reached the cafe, it was closed, but Linhardt was standing on its front step. He had pulled his arms into the body of his coat, and Sylvain almost laughed at the sight of his empty sleeves hanging at his sides, but Linhardt's expression stopped him cold.

"I'm so sorry," Sylvain said. He paused and doubled over, huffing and puffing. "I really… I thought I'd be faster. I'm so sorry." He looked up at Linhardt again. "Do you think we can still make it?"

"Maybe _you_ can, if I warp you again," Linhardt said, dryly. He didn't sound mad, but his monotone didn't exactly inspire forgiveness, either. "I'll just stay here and freeze."

"No no no no, I'm not ditching you here, so let's try," Sylvain said. He wished they'd brought horses, even if it would have meant dealing with Linhardt's poor horsemanship all day. (Why oh why did almost everyone from Adrestia suffer from poor horsemanship?)

Still, Linhardt didn't look optimistic.

"We're not going to make it," he said, flatly.

"They're not going to turn us away over a few minutes," Sylvain said, marching up the front steps and taking Linhardt around the shoulder. He led Linhardt down into the street, hurrying him. "You're a foreign diplomat or something, technically, right? They can't lock you out."

"They can and they will," Linhardt replied. He looked down at himself, puzzling how to get his arms back into his sleeves, and he did so with some fumbling. “We had best just stay with Annette and Felix.”

“No,” Sylvain said, flatly. “One, you have no idea how embarrassing that is for me. Two, Ingrid is expecting me back, Lin. I have to at least try."

Linhardt sighed.

Sylvain tried to make Linhardt walk farther, but Linhardt stopped dead. Sylvain let his hand trail down to Linhardt's wrist. He could easily tug him along, or even toss him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, but Linhardt probably wouldn't like that very much.

“Then why'd you wait for me?” Sylvain asked. "You could have got there with plenty of time, and I could take care of myself."

"What kind of friend would I be if I left?" Linhardt replied.

Until that moment, Sylvain hadn't been convinced that Linhardt had considered him a friend at all. He would have been surprised if Linhardt had considered him an _acquaintance. _Despite the cold night ahead of them, Sylvain smiled.

"Buddy," he said. He put an arm around Linhardt, who sighed.

"And I fell asleep in the cafe," Linhardt said. "I only got up because it was curfew time and they kicked me out."

Sylvain hung his head a little, smiling to himself, and he let his arm drop. Oh well. He'd take what he could get. He was happy regardless.

"We still need a place to stay," Linhardt said. "Do you have any money?"

"No," Sylvain replied. "I'm fucking broke. Do_ you_ have any money?"

"I didn't come out here intending to buy anything," Linhardt replied. "Except for maybe a meal."

He pulled a single coin from his pocket.

"Okay," Sylvain said. He mulled it over. He knew how to make a little bit of money, even on short notice, but he wasn't certain he wanted Linhardt to witness that. "Maybe a card game? Any secret after-dark parlours, maybe? I can turn that coin into more."

"If there were any, what makes you think I'd know anything about them?"

Point.

"To Annette's, then?" Linhardt said.

It was going to be a long night.

The sky never went black, not like it did in Enbarr, where the city lights could sometimes trick you into thinking it was. Out in Fhirdiad, with all the shops closed and taverns emptied and homes settled in for sleep, the sky never got darker than a velvety blue, dotted with thousands of stars, and it was the earth that was black. Sylvain and Linhardt walked through the darkness of the streets, guided only by the light of the moon. Many parts of town went without lamplighters. No one was afoot to need them.

"What happens if knights catch us out here?" Linhardt asked. Even if he lowered his voice, it was still loud enough to shatter the silence. Maybe whispering was too much effort.

"During the war, they'd probably round you up and send you to prison," Sylvain muttered. "Sometimes, anyway. It came and went as the war got better or worse. But in the last five months, very strictly enforced."

"I don't think we imprison people like that now," Linhardt said.

"No? Then what do you about the whole…" Sylvain gestured vaguely. "Criminals, thing."

"Edelgard is very much against imprisonment," Linhardt said.

"Oh, I _know_," Sylvain said.

"Do you?" Linhardt asked, dubiously.

Sylvain did know, but he wasn't sure if it was the same thing Linhardt knew.

"Aww, Lin, let's not and say we did," Sylvain said. "We're friends right now and_ last_ time we had that conversation… no, thank you."

"Touchy."

That was enough to kill the conversation, which left Sylvain feeling uncomfortably close to his thoughts. By now, Felix would enlightened Annette about some things, and Sylvain doubted he would be received well by either. He contemplated sleeping in the stables, even if it would be colder.

It took quite some time to get to the school. Sylvain couldn't quite tell how long without the sun in the sky, but perhaps it was an hour — it was hard to say, as his own thoughts tended to consume time the same way a good book might. If Linhardt didn't yawn periodically, he might not have noticed the passage of time at all. It didn't matter. The lights in the school were mostly dimmed, only a few candles glowing in the rooms lining the upper walls. Sylvain doubted that anyone would be coming to answer the gate at this hour.

"Now what?" he asked Linhardt.

"I don't know," Linhardt said. "Why don't you climb it?"

"Why me?" Sylvain asked.

"Have you ever looked at me and felt inspired with the notion that I could climb a fence?" Linhardt asked, dryly. He flapped his arms pointedly. "I leave that type of thing to you… sorts."

He made a gesture like the shape of a broad-shouldered body. Sylvain hoped that the narrow waist was a bit of an exaggeration, as he had been growing rather attached to Felix's suggestion for him.

"Do you think I look good?" Sylvain asked, laughing. "I know I'm no Ignatz Victor, but I've never really considered myself one of the attractive—"

Linhardt groaned.

"Having arms thicker than tree branches does _not_ make you attractive," Linhardt informed him, so bluntly that Sylvain gasped. "I'm tired. Can you just climb the fence so we can go inside and sleep?"

Sylvain laughed sharply, his voice fleeing down the empty streets.

"Alright, alright," he said. "Lay off. Here I go."

Sylvain approached the gate for the second time that day and sized it up. The scrolling leaves and vines wound right up to the top, and those made good enough footholds, but the top would be difficult. There were spikes, and Sylvain didn't fancy getting over them. Seemed like a good way to lose something precious.

He found a good starting handhold and stepped up, scaling it like an unusual ladder, shifting to the side where necessary. When was the last time he'd climbed a fence? As a boy? Probably. He'd been chased up one by Miklan, or rather, he'd fled up one himself.

It wasn't that Miklan had ever done anything to him. Not at that point, anyway. But whenever Miklan gave chase, Sylvain always felt compelled to run like his life depended on it, and when there was a fence between him and open space, he hadn't thought twice about trying to climb it. He hadn't made it, of course. How old had he been? Eight? Nine? Miklan had plucked him off of the top third of it and bowled him to the ground and laughed: _the fuck are you so worked up about? Get up, get up. Don't be such a little girl, I was only—_

Sylvain slipped. He locked his grip to keep his hold, rattling his shoulders even as he tried to find purchase again with his feet. The gate reacted as if it were alive, a great thrum coming off it like a shout, and in an instant Sylvain was picking himself off the ground. His tailbone sang out. His head spun.

"It's probably got a shield on it," Linhardt remarked.

"Yeah!" Sylvain scoffed. "I noticed, thanks!"

He was in the midst of picking himself up when he heard the footfall of horses some distance behind them, and he turned just enough to see their silhouettes, a hazy darkness illuminated only by the moon. Sylvain thought there was no good reason to run, not when they ostensibly _wanted _to get brought back to the castle, but a fearful impulse overtook him and he grabbed Linhardt by his sleeve and tugged him off down the street until he found a strip of space between two homes. Linhardt opened his mouth to protest, and Sylvain shushed him.

"Why don't we just tell them what happened," Linhardt said, not at all quietly.

"Shut up, man," Sylvain hissed.

It was too late. One of the knights called "who goes there?" and Linhardt pushed by Sylvain and back into the street.

"Hello," Linhardt said. "Can you help us? We didn't make curfew getting back into the castle."

Sylvain sighed. It was very cold, pressing himself into that gap between the buildings, and it smelled very strongly of urine, but he couldn't bring himself to come out, even as the knights struck up a firm but polite conversation with Linhardt. After a moment, all their eyes moved to him, or so he assumed. It was hard to see in the dark.

"Are you Sylvain?" the knight asked.

Sylvain nodded, knowing it wouldn't really be seen, and Linhardt said, exasperated: "Yes, he is Sylvain."

"Come out," the knight ordered. "Ingrid put out a call. We're to bring you back."

Sylvain slouched against the siding, his head thunking off the cheap wood. How badly he had bungled his fragile peace with her sunk in, leaving him feeling like he'd traded one rickety friendship for another and ended up empty-handed anyway. Suddenly, he didn't think he'd be in either Felix or Ingrid's good graces, and that reality was deeply overwhelming.

He looked at the knights. There were three of them, all in full armour over their heavy winter padding. They had horses, but they were not so nimble, and they could not follow him if he stuck to the cramped alleyways between houses.

_ Maybe I should run,_ he thought.

But something stopped him just as quick. Something that felt trite and petty and certainly less respectful than simply knowing staying was the right thing to do: something _foolish._

He thought that his things were in his room in the castle, and Horse was in the stables, and he could not leave without any of it. He couldn't leave without the shirts Hubert had bought for him, or the whale patch that Bernadetta had embroidered, or his silly old nag of a horse, or his sword that was once Dimitri's, or his box that was all he had left of Gautier, or his journal that had all his memories, even the ones he wanted to leave behind. Any of it.

And he had to stay. If he didn't stay, he couldn't make it right.

Sylvain sighed and slunk out of the alley. He couldn't quite see the knight's face, and he was certain the knight couldn't see his, and that was just fine. He didn't want the knight to know how scared he was.

"Hands out," the knight said. He reached to his belt and Sylvain heard the weighty clank of chain links.

"What?"

"Hands out," the knight repeated.

Sylvain swallowed his breath and did as he was told. The manacles clicking around his wrists didn't feel quite as heavy as Ingrid’s inevitable disappointment hanging over him. He didn't say anything as the knights set about connecting his manacles to a length of rope and then tying that to the back of one of the horses. Sylvain grit his teeth as he was made to walk. If being paraded around like a criminal wasn't bad enough, he had Linhardt looking back at him from the back of a saddle, and that made him burn with shame.

"Why don't I get tied up?" Linhardt asked.

"Orders from Captain de Gouges."

Sylvain swallowed his breath. Not Ingrid, then. Ingrid wouldn't play with chains, of course, not when acting under Edelgard's orders. He knew that. But the Captain, apparently, would.

The knights took them through the city. Sylvain's coat was still unbuttoned, and he cringed whenever the metal slipped against the cuffs of his coat and threatened to touch the gap between them and his gloves. He had to walk quickly to keep up with the horses. Too quick for a walk, too slow for a jog, and though he doubted they would deliberately drag him, the snow in the streets had been pounded by thousands of footfalls into a dense, slippery pavement. He knew if he slipped, he couldn't catch himself, and he didn't fancy a broken nose.

Sylvain itched to know what, specifically, had drawn Captain de Gouges' ire. At this point, he'd have to demand it.

They met up with de Gouges herself closer to the centre of the city, at an outpost much like the one Sylvain had waited at earlier. She held a torch aloft, and so she was a lone beacon in a sea of darkness. He held up both hands together to block it, and then he couldn't when he was untied and led to her.

"Always sneaking around, aren't you?" she said to him. She looked particularly intimidating looking down at him from horseback.

"Not really, actually," Sylvain said. "I'm not really the sneaking type. And the castle is where I want to be right now, so this?" He raised his hands best he could with the knight holding onto the link in the middle. "This is unnecessary."

"I’ll never get to see you in chains otherwise, so I’ll take what I can get," she remarked.

“Alright,” he said, a little curtly. She was one of those people who knew something about what he'd contributed to the war, or at least thought she did, based on what she could see on the outside. He said: "Kind of petty, don't you think?"

“Petty?” she repeated. "You beheaded an innocent man. Do you think that _petty?_"

In that instant, it flooded back so quickly and viciously that he wanted to vanish. He wanted to physically throw his mind away, dash it into the snow and kick it under his boots. The thought was nasty. He couldn’t hold it. He couldn’t think about it.

“He died in service to something,” he muttered.

“At your hands.”

Everyone was looking at him. Sylvain said nothing.

"Well," the Captain drawled. "Let's get you back to the Castle, shall we?"


	35. To Make You Happy

Sylvain wondered when he would stop amassing regrets.

Living without regrets should have been easy. The people in his life who didn't linger on them — or at least never _seemed_ to linger on them — moved through the world with a sense of duty and purpose that Sylvain had always longed for, even before he had assembled a vague picture of what he wanted. They did not tarry over the lives they ended in war, and when they hurt people, they didn't look back.

Sylvain was not like that. He knew that. He couldn't not look back, and he could not imagine hurting someone purposefully. He was never the sort of drunk that abused people or started fights. He never had anyone in his bed who wasn't content to be there at the time. He never pillaged and plundered. He'd never even been much of a rebel beyond skipping class, and the only personal gains he'd lied for were pretty embarrassing to admit. He wasn't sure that he'd ever really even talked back to his parents, or been all that rude to his professors. Sylvain had a lot of friends, and he was fortunate by birth. Was his life even that difficult? His parents went through the same deplorable system that he would have inherited. His brother tormented him because being the only child was preferable to watching his birthright play out for someone else for his entire life. Girls wanted him not just for his crest, but because through marriage they could save themselves from any variety of miseries -- poverty, abusive families, being sold off. All of that considered, what reason did he have to be fucking up all the time?

He didn't want to think he was a bad person. Bad people didn't seem to lay in bed and night and ponder the things they'd said and done. It made him feel like he lacked control over some basic instinct that most humans seemed to possess and wield in the same effortlessness he could smile with: an ability to go about their day and not hurt himself or others.

Why had he told Felix to wait until spring after all when the only thing he wanted was to be with someone that made him want to build a future for himself? Why had he been so flippant about Ingrid's simple desire to keep him close, and safe, and out of trouble? Why did he fail to appreciate, time and time again, that everyone in his life wanted him to be better, the same as he wanted for himself?

Why couldn't he just let his dearest friends take care of him?

Why was he so _awful?_

Last time Sylvain had been brought to Fhirdiad, he'd had the luxury of riding in a carriage, despite having been accused of treason at its highest level. In the eyes of everyone in Faerghus' upper echelons, he'd traded away his kingdom for a chance at getting under some girl's skirt — the future emperor, the opera starlet, the foreign princess, a mercenary-cum-professor. That was forgivable, at least to a point.

Now he was led behind a horse with rapidly dwindling energy after a long day, ten years older, and his reasons felt equally trite, but now he didn't have the conviction of wanting to see the Church burn, or crests die, or anything like that.

He had just wanted to see Felix.

He'd wanted a lot worse in his life than that.

By time they entered the gates, his eyes were watering from the cold, and his jaw hurt from trying to avoid shivering. Linhardt kept looking down at him and asking if he was alright, getting increasingly annoyed whenever Sylvain told him that _yes, _he was fine. Nothing he couldn't handle. The Captain was less concerned. She called for the warden and Sylvain just contemplated how badly his back was going to hurt in the morning after sleeping on the stone floor.

"I'm going to get Ingrid," Linhardt said.

Sylvain was surprised that Linhardt would volunteer for anything, but he wasn't about to open his mouth. The Captain just waved him off, not seeming particularly enthused with it. As Linhardt vanished inside, the Captain looked to Sylvain. He chose to look dead ahead of him instead, even if that meant staring directly at a horse's ass.

"Gautier," the Captain said, apparently unwilling to let him shiver in silence.

He ignored her. She repaid his rudeness by reaching to the rope still lashed to her saddle and pulling him towards her. He grit his teeth and resisted just enough to disrupt her balance in the saddle, and for his attitude he was yanked harder. His stomach twisted.

"Easy," Sylvain said, tersely.

"Spare me," she said. "You never think the rules apply to you, do you? And it's always left to someone else to clean up the mess."

"Please—I'm sure I'll hear it from Ingrid."

"She'll go too easy on you," the Captain scoffed. There was something deeply frustrating about having someone know him much better than he could in return, but Sylvain bit his tongue. "I wonder if you've _ever_ had a woman tell you _'no'_ before."

Sylvain yanked his wrists from her grip, hard enough that he actually got free of her. The manacles clanked noisily, and Sylvain felt every head turn in his direction. He thought about saying something angry but he reminded himself that he'd be proving her right, even more right than she already felt looking down on him. He swallowed his anger like boiling water and smiled at her.

"I lived with Edelgard for a while," he informed her. "She's rarely told me _yes_ in the entire time I've—"

"Hey!" Ingrid shouted, her voice shattering the night. She took the steps two at a time, and in her haste to get to them, she wore neither a coat nor proper boots for the snow. Linhardt trailed behind her. His sour expression had nothing on Ingrid's fury. Sylvain swallowed what little breath he had left, and if the cold wasn't enough, he felt his balls retract even further at the sight of her.

The Captain looked down her nose at him and said something low that Sylvain didn't hear. He was too focused on Ingrid's rapid approach, and when she reached him, she took him by his wrists. Sylvain flinched, but she just turned her furious eyes to the Captain.

"Key," Ingrid ordered. Her voice was very tight.

The Captain glanced to another knight, who retrieved it from his belt. Sylvain waited with his jaw tensed as his wrists were unshackled, and the moment the second cuff sprang loose, Ingrid said to him: "Walk."

He wasn't going to be told twice. He gave the Captain a wide berth and he beelined for the stairs, Ingrid at his side with a firm hand on his lower back. The manacles swung from her free hand, and the moment they reached Linhardt, she turned back.

"Go inside. I'll be right back."

Sylvain and Linhardt exchanged a look; neither moved to go back in, instead turning to see what Ingrid was doing. There was a fire in her walk that made Sylvain feel like he was jumping all over the place. Some of that was for him, surely, but it had been a long time since he'd see her in such a righteous fury. It struck him that he was not entirely on the receiving end of it.

"Hey! These?" Ingrid called to the Captain. She held up the manacles up, and when got within ten feet of the Captain, she threw them down. They clattered heavily off the wet stone, and a number of perfectly seasoned knights flinched. A horse almost bolted. "We don't use these. Orders from Edelgard."

The Captain sat a little taller in the saddle.

"Edelgard knows very well who we’re dealing with.”

"I don’t care.When I asked you to find him, I explicitly said to let him go if he didn't want to come back," Ingrid replied, firmly. "And I certainly didn't ask you to bring him back in chains. If you can't set aside your feelings to do your job, Olympe…”

Sylvain fully expected Ingrid to get clobbered. He didn't know why; he just felt that was something the Captain might do. But instead, the Captain just lifted her chin and said a very curt "my apologies" that definitely sounded a lot more like _fuck you_. Sylvain didn't think his time in chains had come to an end.

"Why are you smiling like that?" Linhardt muttered.

"Shut up," Sylvain muttered back, though it did indeed wipe the smile off his face.

Ingrid had dropped her voice at that point, and she and the Captain talked back and forth a bit. When they were finished, the Captain and the other knights went back out into the city. Ingrid did not come back. She stood there, watching as the gate lowered once more, a hand in her hair. When she didn't seem likely to move, Sylvain shucked off his coat and ran back to her. She turned her head as he draped it around her; her eyes were glassy, and about as indignant as the rest of her.

"Orders, huh?" Sylvain said, lightly as he could.

"Go inside," she told him.

"Come inside with me," he coaxed her. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, I think I_— _did I freak you out?"

She nodded, and Sylvain slipped an arm around her shoulders that she immediately brushed off. He muttered another apology, following her back in. Linhardt had gone just far enough in to get the door for them.

"Ingrid, I didn't mean to cause trouble, honest," he said. He wasn't sure what would happen if he didn't keep her talking, or at least listening. He wanted her to understand something; what that was, he didn't know. "I just—"

She turned her gaze to him sharply. That she cared enough about him to start a manhunt was about as touching as it was embarrassing, and it felt unavoidable when he saw the look in her eyes. Sylvain’s gaze dropped to the floor, and Ingrid sighed.

“I don’t even know what to say to you,” she said. Sylvain knew that wasn’t true. She absolutely had a dozen things prepared, she just didn’t know which to start with.

(He supposed it was a good sign that she didn’t greet him with a packed bag, though.)

“Linhardt asked me to go,” he said.

“Linhardt doesn’t make the rules—” Ingrid had to stop herself short, as Linhardt abruptly veered off to the side, surely with the intention of escaping the brewing spat. She marched after him and caught his sleeve. “Oh, no no no. You’re a part of this.”

“Me?” Linhardt asked, dryly.

“Yes, you,” Ingrid said. “Linhardt, why didn’t you grab _any_ of the knights?”

“Sylvain wasn’t doing anything,” he said. He glanced between Ingrid and Sylvain as if they were missing something, which Sylvain imagined they were. “You’re always saying you hope he’ll find a job. Well, now he has one.”

Embarrassment flickered across Ingrid’s face.

“That’s not what I— _listen._ He’s not ready.”

“I did fine until the end,” Sylvain said.

“He did,” Linhardt agreed.

Ingrid looked between them, exasperated.

“We didn’t have any trouble, other than getting back,” Linhardt said. “Sylvain was actually quite helpful. He smoothed things over with a victim’s family, even. If he hadn’t been there, they would have refused to speak with me. It might have even saved some lives.”

The doubt on her face slowly wore away, leaving her pursing her lips. Sylvain pondered hugging her, or squeezing or hand, or something. He could smile or he could play it up; yeah, he'd helped out! He'd done something useful! He hadn't gotten in trouble at that point, which had to count for something!

Instead, he just waited for the other shoe to drop.

But Linhardt said nothing.

“I’ll leave you alone,” Linhardt said, and he walked off. Ingrid made to call after him, but she lingered, a hand reaching after him, her mouth open. It didn’t matter. She stood with Sylvain in silence for a moment, the two of them caught in a snare.

“It wasn’t all smooth sailing,” Sylvain said, finally.

She shrugged a little deeper into his coat. It was decently warm in the castle, as least as far as castles went. Somehow it made her look a little sadder to be wrapped in his big coat, the fur collar going right up her cheeks.

“Did you even _try_ to come back?"

She sounded like she wanted to be hopeful.

“I did, but when it got dark I thought I was screwed at that point,” Sylvain admitted. "Linhardt was pretty convinced we'd never make it, anyway, so we went to find someplace to bunk down for the night.”

“They would have let you in,” Ingrid said.

“Really?”

“Yes. The gatekeeper knows to. The last thing I want is for you to get stuck out there,” she said. “I just didn’t tell you that because...”

“Then I’d know I could get back in whenever I pleased,” Sylvain said. It felt a little tight.

"I didn't _want_ to raise the guard, you know," she said. "I really didn't. But when you weren't back, and the porter told me you'd left with Linhardt and neither of you had come back, I thought about where you could be and I didn't like a single one of them. I thought to let you go and hope you came back but then I got scared and— augh."

She let out a long, exhausted breath, and she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes for a moment. The look she gave him after was not teary or even frustrated; it was _tired_. It made him feel like he was being gutted.

“Fuck. I’m sorry, Ingrid. I didn’t mean to mess this up.”

"I know," she said. "I actually believe you."

That _actually_ was going to repeat in his head longer than some expression of trust. Sylvain thought she was kind to trust him at all. She wouldn't have if she'd known it wasn't his first trip out, and she wouldn't soon when he admitted to going to the School of Sorcery.

“I broke a promise to you, Ingrid," he said, very bluntly. It came out in one big gust. He felt like he was throwing himself in front of a blade.

Ingrid said nothing for a moment, her lips tightly pressed together and her hand suddenly very stiff on his forearm.

“How?” she asked, testily.

“I went to the School of Sorcery,” Sylvain confessed.

“Oh,” Ingrid said. She breathed a sigh, and Sylvain felt relief, terrible relief, as deep as his fear. “That’s… not the worst thing. Did you see Felix?”

“A little,” he said. “I thought it was going to be bad, like we were going to fight or I was just going to drop dead, but you know what? It was actually pretty okay. I told him we’d talk in the spring. I’m not going to bother him if he wants to be on his own. He's here, and he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere for the winter, so if he wants to talk... I’m here too.”

Ingrid watched him very carefully, and then she said: “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. She opened her mouth to say something more, but she just smiled instead.

“What?” Sylvain asked, matching her smile. Her eyes were still sad, but he guessed his were too.

“Nothing,” she said. She beckoned for him to follow. "Let's go warm up with some tea before bed, huh?"

Sylvain nodded, and though he felt he wanted something much stronger than tea to calm his nerves, he told himself that it was enough to be with a friend. He had friends at his side. He would have to find Linhardt, too; Linhardt had shown more friendship to him in the past day than Sylvain had shown to Linhardt in their entire lives, and that deserved a _thank you_, at the very least.

"Jeez," he said, with a big breath out. He threw an arm around her. "I swear, when you came across the yard, I thought you were going to kill me."

"I wouldn't do that. You're so dramatic," Ingrid scolded him, putting a hand over his. It was an awkward way to walk, but he liked how she sighed and leant her head against his shoulder, even if it was brief.

"Me? Dramatic?" Sylvain chuckled. "Never heard that in my life…"

The encounter with the Captain aside, Sylvain was pleased to have had things gone his way for once. He couldn't remember a risk he'd taken in the last six months that had ended with a full belly, friendly company and going peacefully to bed, and lingering worries about Felix and the dungeon aside, he felt like he'd maybe actually made some sort of progress with himself. It felt good to wake up that next morning with an optimism in his heart. In another six months, that feeling could be normal, unremarkable. He'd go down to breakfast in the morning without a care or thought for his good mood.

He would smile because he liked to smile, not because he needed the world to know something about him.

But he still gave the Captain a wide berth. When he briefly met her eyes across the dining hall that morning, he quickly turned away, not wanting to invite another confrontation. Sylvain went right to his usual table spot and slid onto the bench next to Linhardt. Ingrid hadn't arrived yet, and Linhardt did not so much as look up from the book he'd propped against a table pitcher. Sylvain leaned into his space.

"Hey, buddy," Sylvain said. "Sleep well?"

Linhardt gave Sylvain a look.

"Yes," he said, curtly. And then, after shuffling through his brain for the polite response, he asked: "Did you?"

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "Listen, I didn't get a chance to properly thank you yesterday, for everything you did. Getting me to the school, waiting for me, going to get Ingrid… I really appreciate that."

"Oh," Linhardt said. "You're welcome."

Sylvain smiled. Dealing with Felix's bluntness over the course of their young adulthood had certainly thickened his skin, and it was the only reason that kind of curt response did not send him fleeing for the hills. He chuckled under his breath. Linhardt simply lacked the tact that Felix often chose not to deploy.

"I owe you one," Sylvain said. "Really. So if there's anything else I can do to make up for it, you'll let me know, right?"

Linhardt pondered that for a moment. Sylvain drummed his fingers on the tabletop idly.

"I would say that I still need assistance in the city," Linhardt replied, finally. "But for all I know, it could just be another mess by the end of the day."

"I saw Felix, I got it out of my system," Sylvain promised. "I'll go with you. If Ingrid is okay with it, that is."

"I could be," Ingrid replied, sitting down across from them. Sylvain looked up at her and smiled. She hadn't brushed her hair that morning, and the back was mussed up in a way that had Sylvain biting back a grin. He also spotted the dark blush of a love mark peeking over the top of her collar. Another late night date with Emilia, maybe? It was so distracting that it took him a moment to process what she'd said, and by that point she was adjusting her collar and giving him a look that told him to _shut up._

"Really?" he asked. "You think I could?"

"Really," she said. "I'm not exactly comfortable with it, but you have to do something with your time. I definitely don't want you to be a knight again, but I guess as far as jobs go… you'd make a decent bodyguard."

"I don't want to be a knight anyway," he said. "I'm happy just to be a bodyguard. Thank you."

Things really were looking up.

"I suppose we can do that, then," Linhardt said. He closed the book. "I'll need the escort, after all. Things are getting rather unpleasant in the city and I expect I'll have to be there more often."

"You can brief me on that later," Ingrid said. "Or if you need time to prepare, you can brief the constable for the society of physicians, and he'll let me know. My only request is that you keep Sylvain out of those matters. I don't want anyone thinking that a nobleman from the old regime can just poke his nose anywhere he'd like."

She turned her green eyes to Sylvain very pointedly.

"You are a bodyguard _only_."

"Bodyguard only," Sylvain repeated, and he clasped his hands together under his chin and leant against the table. Ingrid immediately rolled her eyes and avoided his gaze, but that wasn't any matter to him. He knew that the longer he kept it up, the sooner she'd have to acknowledge him fawning over her. She'd _have_ to.

"You know, I can't wait until spring," Ingrid said.

"Why?" Sylvain smiled.

"Because you're like a puppy," she said. "And one puppy can be pretty annoying, jumping all over you all the time, getting into trouble. But two puppies, they can keep each other busy. I'll get twice as much done if Felix comes back."

Sylvain laughed. He thought about them pawing at each other, rolling around on the floor or in the grass as children, and the look on Felix's face when they'd been nose to nose in bed. Yeah. Puppies. Real dogs, the both of them, him a big ol' hound and Felix some scrappy badger-hunter.

He smiled at Ingrid. Under all that cool maturity and those lofty dreams for an independent Faerghus, under that tousled blonde hair and sleek armour, she was a puppy too, one that had no qualms with trouncing all her friends in the dirt and then tracking mud home.

"I'm looking forward to it, too."

It turned out it was a fair bit more humbling, in reality, to be a bodyguard.

His little stunt had been easily set aside by Ingrid, but the knights were not so forgiving. Their usual evening rounds had been upset by the manhunt called in his honour, and most of them held him responsible. If he wasn't aware of his poor reputation beforehand, now it felt impossible to ignore. The former Margrave Gautier was an idiot who couldn't find his way home. How anyone had ever trusted him with the running of an estate and its lands was the greatest failing of the nobility; that the futures of tens of thousands of people depended on the temperament of whatever heir was given was ridiculous.

Sometimes, sprawled in the hay in the brothel stables, a bottle in one hand and a girl bobbing at his lap, he'd laughed about the greatest thing he'd ever done for Edelgard's cause: shown the people of Gautier exactly why their governance shouldn't be selected by birthright, and ensuring they, like many other regions, would never tolerate it again.

That was a small consolation prize when he was getting jeered at and deliberately bumped into in passing.

"Are you sure you don't want someone else doing this?" he asked Linhardt on their third outing that week, when a routine pass through the gate had suddenly called for a random search of his person. "Most people don't want a bodyguard who attracts attention."

"It's that or a knight complaining about you constantly," Linhardt replied. "At least you're not fishing for gossip."

"Huh," Sylvain said. "Fair."

If their roles were swapped, maybe he would feel similar.

But over the course of just a week, Sylvain already felt like he was already settling into some degree of normalcy. It felt good to rise at the same time every day and eat breakfast with his friends, and to groom himself with the intent of going out and being seen. No matter how putrid the city could be, it was more refreshing than being cooped up in the castle, and it was nice to learn to be amongst people again. Getting metaphorical shit sprinkled on him periodically by the knights couldn't possibly deter him.

Sylvain accompanied Linhardt to all manners of places, private homes and public squares, physician's offices and little convents. He kept his head down enough to stay out of trouble but peeked out just enough to get a better sense of the city. He'd had plenty of time in the past few years to meander Enbarr as a commoner, but Fhirdiad was a place he'd only ever explored as a nobleman, and the vague sense of anonymity he felt at Linhardt's heels was liberating. He did learn a little bit more about Linhardt's work, too, despite Ingrid's interest in him staying out of the way. Cholera was a slow-moving blight, stopping its victims in their tracks too quickly for others to succumb to whatever invisible force moved it, and Linhardt told him that it could take months to chalk up even a hundred victims, but it was important to establish a pattern as quickly as possible. After all, the next outbreak could spread more quickly. One could rely on people to constantly shape their world, building this and eradicating that, starting wars here and planting fields there, but nature was so much more unpredictable, more volatile. Perhaps Faerghus would have an unprecedented good summer, with plenty of sun and the right amount of rain. Perhaps they would all be drowned out, climbing to the rickety second stories of their houses with the rats and the roaches. There was no way of knowing, and that ambiguity was oddly comforting because it wasn't something he had to worry about controlling.

He didn't know what his future looked like, other than that there would be rain, and that there would be sunshine. Looking forward to the sunshine would have to be enough.

It was nice, too, to get to know Linhardt a little better.

He hadn't known, for example, that Linhardt had given up House Hevring by choice, and to very little fanfare. He had operated under the assumption that many of his noble classmates, like him, had struggled to defy the expectations of their birth, but that was apparently not so for Linhardt. In some ways it didn't surprise him — he couldn't imagine Linhardt taking anything but the path of least resistance in life, and to leave one's birthright seemed to be a guaranteed struggle — but it was strange to imagine someone walking away from that life, and stranger still to imagine a parent giving it up. Maybe if there weren't younger siblings in line, it might have been harder, Sylvain reasoned. Maybe if the house didn't rely on him alone. But Linhardt passed the whole affair off as nothing: one day he simply said he wasn't interested, and Edelgard had offered him a position where he could pursue his passions. That was that.

And he could make for better conversation than Sylvain had ever expected, too.

"Look at her," Sylvain said, as they sat on a step and ate bits of bread and hard cheese brought with them from the castle for lunch. Linhardt took some time to find the object of Sylvain's attention — a young woman selling notions out of a satchel, lovely lengths of hand-woven lace and sewing needles. Her long hair fell out from under her cap, and her cheeks were blushed from the cold. Sylvain watched her approach people in the market one after the other.

"What about her?" Linhardt asked.

"She's cute," Sylvain said. What else was there to say?

Linhardt gave him a dubious look.

"Aww," Sylvain groaned. "Come on. Indulge me for a minute, man to man. You don't think she's cute?"

"I suppose you could apply some conventional wisdom to her," Linhardt replied. He looked like he was grasping for something to say. "She has rosy cheeks."

"And tits," Sylvain said. He made a gesture at his own chest, like Linhardt might not know what a tit was.

"You can't even see them," Linhardt said, turning his eyes back to his bread. He frowned at it, and then he picked out a piece of improperly ground wheat. "You might as well just imagine a whole girl. Or if you want nothing to look at in that department, Felix."

"You check out Felix?" Sylvain teased.

"That is your department."

Sylvain chuckled, a little dangerously. If he was being honest, girls took up far less real estate in his mind than they had in previous years. Felix was creeping up on them, occupying more and more of his attention by day. It felt like part adage — _absence makes the heart grow fonder_ or something of that sort — and part desperation to not forget Felix's face.

_Crazy, _he thought, that being in love with someone give you those sorts of paranoias. It could have been years since he'd last seen Felix and he still wouldn't have been in any actual danger of forgetting Felix's face. He'd known Felix much too long for that.

"You miss your fiancé?" Sylvain asked Linhardt.

"Every day," Linhardt said, a little ruefully.

"Mm," Sylvain hummed. "How'd you two meet?"

"I imagine you'd find that a little boring," Linhardt replied.

"I'm asking anyway," Sylvain said, but he imagined it was true. Linhardt was not the type to spend a whole night drinking with someone and decide to just never leave their bed. Linhardt was not likely to have rescued someone from a bad situation and swept them away on a big white horse. Where was the fun of that?

Still. It counted, to get to know someone.

"Well, Edelgard had opened that research facility and had offered to let me live there because then I wouldn't have to waste my time traveling to and fro in the city."

"Uh huh."

"There was an aide who was assigned to do boring tasks — file notes, run errands, manage samples, that sort of ilk. He was very strange. He wanted to talk to me all the time, and he kept sitting up late with me to help me with my research, but we always seemed to talk about whatever we fancied rather than our work."

"And that was it," Sylvain said. "You just knew."

Linhardt smiled, which tickled Sylvain.

"No, actually," Linhardt said. "I couldn't stand it. I was getting distracted from things that normally held my interest all day, even for weeks at a time. I asked the supervisor to our facility to have him replaced, but he refused, so I had to inquire with Edelgard, and she said she had better things to do."

Linhardt exhaled, exasperated.

"And I realized there was something different about him, but it didn't matter, because I'd spent my whole life unconcerned with those things, and nothing I felt seemed at all like what other people did. I think watching you and Dorothea at the Academy used up my entire life's patience for that sort of thing."

"Whoops," Sylvain offered. "She and I were a bit of a disaster, weren't we?"

"A nightmare. But I realized," Linhardt continued, "that even if what I felt for him was unusual to me, I enjoyed his presence after all. So I let him stay."

"And then you got engaged."

"And then we got engaged, yes. His name is Luca, by the way. You never asked."

Sylvain smiled.

"You'll have nice monograms on the wedding invitations, at least," he said. "I always wanted mine and my lover's monogram carved into the header of our bed. My parents had that and it looked cool."

Linhardt hummed some little noise, immediately disinterested. Sylvain smiled into the crowds, the girl with the notions lost in a sea of people. He forgot her face immediately, even her rosy cheeks, instead thinking back to Felix. SJG+FHF. Not a very pretty set of letters, but maybe Lorenz or someone with good penmanship would be interested in providing a design.

If there was a bed for them someday, anyway.

"How did you and Felix meet?" Linhardt asked, in a tone that was like pulling teeth. Some vague attempt to meet Sylvain halfway, and one that he felt as viscerally as he felt Bernadetta's needlepoint, or Annette's hug, or Hubert pulling out his wallet. "You were childhood friends, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "I guess that's it, isn't it? We probably first met when we were too young to remember, but the first I can… hmm. Maybe our fathers set us down to fight each other. Maybe I helped him mount that shitty little pony he had. Who knows? We really were that small, and we only saw each other a couple times a year until Garreg Mach. We wrote a lot."

"Caspar and I met when we were six. He asked me if I wanted to eat a bug he caught."

"Oh, nice," Sylvain replied. "That definitely happened with us at some point, except I think it was a very tiny toad."

"A toad?!"

"Yeah, you know." Sylvain held up a hand, his index finger barely half an inch from his thumb. "Ingrid caught it down by the pond, right at the beginning of spring. Nobody had the guts to try it. Did you eat the bug?"

"I did," Linhardt said, with a grimace. "We made a pact about it, about never forgetting each other's birthdays. We still send each other gifts every year, which is hardly something you need a pact for."

Sylvain had made a pact, too, but he kept it tucked away in his pocket, just for him and Felix. Remembering it made his smile fade a little. It wasn't a very pleasant pact, now that he thought about it. Not for the lives they currently lived.

"Why are you so sad all the time, if he's staying in Fhirdiad?" Linhardt asked. "I thought that would make you happy."

That kind of question felt like getting hit in the face. Sylvain might have even preferred that.

"I'm _not_ sad," Sylvain said. "I'm just tired. There's a difference."

"One I'd know," Linhardt said, dryly. _"I'm_ tired. You aren't tired. I've seen you do that thing in the courtyard where you fling around a lance for an hour and walk away looking proud of yourself."

"I'm really not sad," Sylvain said, but just hearing it said out loud was a little mortifying: did people _notice_? He was clearly slipping. He stumbled: "Are _you_ happy?All you do is gripe. You're bored with most of your work -- you even complained about coming out here today! What in Fódlan makes you happy when you never show it?"

Linhardt turned his morose eyes on Sylvain, and he smiled the slightest bit. It felt like that smile was a little bit at his expense.

"Oh, I hate this place, but I assure you that I am very happy," he said. "Happiness just appears for me. It has no rhyme or reason. It is reading a good book with my beloved while he brews us another cup of tea, or when Ingrid doesn't stop bothering me until I get up and I happen to have a breakthrough I might not have had if I'd lounged around. It was sharing my discoveries with Professor Hanneman. Fishing on a warm day, where I don't mind going home empty-handed if I got a good nap instead."

Huh.

"Is that really long-term, though?"

"It can happen almost every day," Linhardt said. "Is that not long enough for you?"

"It's fine, it's just..." He gestured vaguely. "I don't have a beloved, I don't want Ingrid to spend our lives chasing after me, I don't need to discover anything."

"Well, get your own things to be happy about, then."

Linhardt was so much like Felix sometimes, prone to these piques of fickleness and disinterested in mincing any words. Felix might have given a similar answer, even, something along the lines of training, swords, and hunting. For that, Sylvain just found himself chuckling. He could have happily nagged Felix to do the things he avoided. And if they traveled together, Sylvain could point out the landscapes, the things he loved, the wilderness and the creatures and the beauty of it all. He could have been Felix's hand to hold. He could have been Felix's beloved.

It probably wasn't good to hinge his happiness on thoughts like that, though.

"I don't think you can ask a person to make you happy," Sylvain said.

"Why not?"

"That's not how people work, Lin."

Linhardt gave a completely nonplussed shrug.

"I'm different, then," Linhardt replied. "I wouldn't bother being with someone who didn't make me happy."

"I'm not saying I'd be with someone who didn't make me happy," Sylvain said. "I'm just saying..."

He trailed off. Linhardt didn't press him to finish. In fact, he just turned his eyes ahead of him.

Two weeks after the incident with De Gouges and without further incident with Linhardt, Ingrid gave him permission to tag along with her, as well. He appreciated time out with Ingrid, and the knights were far less likely to take potshots at him with someone they respected around. Linhardt had neither the energy nor the motivation to put in extra hours, but before long Sylvain slowly found himself rising with Ingrid in the mornings and getting a few hours in the city or around the castle before Linhardt even woke up.

Her work consisted largely of managing people, going to and fro about the city. She checked in on who was running this program and who was overseeing the markets and trade and who was managing soup kitchens and who was directing the public hospitals and so on. Ingrid had people to deliver messages and retrieve updates for her, of course, but she knew every name and every face herself. She liked to do the rounds herself just as often, just to know for herself, and she occasionally rolled up her sleeves (so to speak) to help with some small task here or there. Sylvain was happy to see the people enjoying her presence, and that a bit of it might rub off on him; on more than one occasion he'd go straight from Linhardt's side to Ingrid's and find himself unloading carts or carrying boxes or tracking down some wayward representative.

There was never a shortage of good deeds to be done in the city, too. Poverty demanded at least a little charity each day, like yeast demanding to be fed, lest it die out entirely. It was not at all like the brothels he’d worked at, scoffing as he was tossed coins directly from the pockets of the wealthy. He'd thought that life experience might have prepared him better, but here the poor were aided largely by the slightly-less-poor, and those people looked to those just a step above them, and so on. It was humbling for a privileged shit like him to see first-hand how neglect from the upper classes could fail to alleviate the situation, or in terrible cases, worsen it.

On the ground, it was difficult to see what the wealthy did for the people at all.

“That’s why Edelgard’s policies don’t work all that well here,” Ingrid explained over dinner. “The poor of Fhirdiad don’t see a shred of themselves in some Emperor, but when her policies are carried out by their own people...”

“I know,” Sylvain said. “Chain of command, and all. I think what’s just surprising about it is to see it in action. We were raised our whole lives to succeed our parents and rule, and yet I’m not sure any of us would have had the experience to understand it. Principle? Sure. But nothing I was ever taught matters for shit here.”

“It’s true,” Ingrid said. “That’s why we work so hard now.”

And work hard they did. He went to bed each night exhausted but satisfied that he’d done something to better himself, or his understanding of their world, or his friendships. On days where Ingrid declined his company, he made himself useful in other ways: helping Linhardt chart things, or doing minor repairs around the castle. He wasn’t much of a handyman, but he could shoe a horse, and that was enough transferrable skill with a hammer and nail to repair a few wobbly chairs and lopsided tables. He wouldn’t get any awards, nor would he ever qualify for even the lousiest apprenticeship, but that was alright: the look on Ingrid’s face was enough.

Annette came by a week after his foolish evening and stayed just long enough to assess the dungeons and chat over tea. The dungeon, she assured, could be drained in the coming weeks. Catching up was a little less simple; Sylvain found himself winding around the uglier aspects of the past six moons, but there was no avoiding Felix after a point. Annette said nothing about Felix — it left Sylvain wondering if Felix hadn’t told her anything at all — but there was just enough tension for him to feel she certainly did know, and he was too much of a coward to ask about any relations between them. Whatever she knew, she did not share. It was, it seemed, a matter for Sylvain and Felix alone.

Absence was making him fonder. It was truer by the day, and harsher by the night. Sylvain found himself laying awake at the ends of what should have been sufficiently tiring days, wound into his bed in a way that his blankets twisted up against his chest and between his legs and let him imagine, if only for a second, that he wasn’t alone. He would get up after an hour or more of sleeplessness and write a bit in his journal, going over this and that, and then he’d crawl back into bed and try again. Sometimes he dreamed of his old life, and he’d wake up missing that sorely too, but to get his feet on the floor each morning he need only remind himself of the misery of living that way. Sometimes he was still up when Ingrid rose, and he'd tell her _well, you know_ and head out with her without any further explanation.

He’d only gained mere steps of ground between himself and who he had been so recently. He couldn't get complacent. He could mope through the night, but he couldn't take a day off. If he didn’t keep pushing himself, he’d slide back down, and maybe he wouldn't come back again.

He'd used up his first, second, and sometimes even third chances.

Sylvain Jose Gautier had to keep going.


	36. I Won't Wait Until Spring

At the start of a new week, running on fewer hours of sleep than he could count on one hand, Sylvain found himself with an idea.

It had come to him by accident: he'd been too hasty pulling one of his two pairs of trousers out of the wardrobe and he'd sent his journal flying off the edge of the desktop in the process. Normally that might have been fine, but he'd been so tired the night before that he'd left the strap undone. He watched in horror as it pinwheeled through the air, the pages ruffling, and it hit the ground opened. The spine bent backwards and little bits of paper flew out from their homes between the pages.

For a moment, he looked at it in horror, willing it to move backwards in time and reassemble itself. When it did not, all he could do was crouch down to collect it, picking up all the clippings and scraps and putting them under the cover so he could reorganize them later.

And then, as he flipped through the pages, he realized it was almost done. There wasn't a lot of space left. He'd have to get a new one.

Crouched on his bedroom floor, the journal in hand, he contemplated if he had enough coin for one. He decided that he did; Edelgard was going to be headed to Fhirdiad soon anyway, and he hoped he could get a bit more out of her. He'd send some of that to his daughter and her mother, and then see how long he could live on the rest.

He considered simply not buying a new one. Journals were half the cost of books; paper was probably just as expensive as the time it would take for someone to fill one. But then what?

He flipped through the pages, absorbing snippets here or there: some girl at a brothel. Some night out. Some church he'd seen. Some friend he'd eaten with. Felix — Felix, Felix, Felix — and thousands of words of destruction and rebuilding.

Now that he thought about it, it might be nice to start a new journal.

And then what to do with this one?

He rifled through the pages again.

He'd decide what to do later. He got up, knees protesting, and he fetched his coin purse. He could justify a little bit of money on a new journal, he decided. It would last him at least a year's worth of reflection. That was a good investment.

Sylvain recalled the date. It was the sixteenth day of the Pegasus Moon at that point, which was notable only for its proximity to Felix's birthday.

There was another thought. Linhardt's remarks about birthdays floated back to mind, too, and Sylvain thought he should do something about it. Springtime was still a long way away, but whatever he bought would keep.

But what would he even get? Felix was in no short supply of sharp things to flip around and stab people with, and smoked meats felt impersonal. He did not want to gift Felix something practical — that might signal he was fine with Felix going back to Remire. He also did not want to give Felix something too impractical, as it might seem thoughtless to a man intending on living in the woods. Felix was, and always had been, a nightmare to shop for.

So when Sylvain went down to breakfast that morning, he casually floated the idea of going out shopping on his own when there was time, and where he might go for such a thing. Linhardt was of no help, but his work never took them into the marketplaces that sold artisanal goods, anyway — just food and drink, places where spoiled goods might spread disease. He didn't want to bother Ingrid with the task, but she made short work of his supposedly _casual_ suggestion that he go out alone for _shopping, _and even when he told her that he wanted a journal and _maybe_ something for Felix, she insisted on going with him herself. That wasn't bad at all, by Sylvain's count, but then he was stuck waiting for her to have _time_ to go. She always had some excuse, and she was adamant that he not go without her.

And then, when they finally went, she had the gall to not be much help, anyway. Finding a journal was easy — there wasn't much to choose from, and he did not have the funds for anything custom — but a gift for Felix eluded him as stubbornly as Felix himself did.

Ingrid groaned and elbowed Sylvain in the side.

"You're killing me," she said. "Just pick something, we've been out here for an hour."

"It has to be something he'll like," Sylvain said. And it couldn't cost a lot of money, either; he'd padded out his wallet by borrowing a little from Linhardt, but he couldn't give Felix the world, no matter how much he wanted to. He had no idea what his situation would be when he was finished his work for Edelgard, and he did not want to rue some extravagant purchase when he next struggled to put together money for his child. Being raised with no concept of money, he had never learned to budget. He had two modes of spending: all of it, or none of it.

For Felix, he would try.

"He's the worst for gifts, though," Ingrid said. "If he doesn't like it, he'll tell you so, and if it's something he likes, it's going to be barely one step above something he's neutral on. And if it's from either of us, he'll downplay it anyway."

"I know," Sylvain admitted. "I just…"

He wanted it to be nice, regardless of when that moment came. He didn't want Felix to think he'd been careless at the market, picking up some trinket he might get for any of his past lovers. It had to be different if he wanted to prove something.

"I know," Ingrid sighed. "I know. Look, I'm just going to take him out to dinner when I see him next, that'll make him happy enough."

"That old trick!" Sylvain scoffed. "You'll get a meal too!"

"That's the _point _of dinner, that we eat _together!_" Ingrid insisted.

They went away laughing down the row of stalls, stepping around people and ducking under awnings laden with strung-up goods. Each had something different than the next, the wooden stalls offering rows of bolted fabric and flagons of wine and skeins of wool, and the goods from further afield followed on big wheeled carts pushed from place to place by the chapmen, who offered, amongst other things, great bags of salt. The salt bags were filled to bursting, the canvas waxed to ward off the cold and wet.

Sylvain touched his fingers to one, imagining the path it had travelled all the way from the salt flats around Enbarr — the same one he'd taken, actually. He idly wondered if it would ever be mined locally, to cut down on that miserable journey.

It didn't keep his attention for long. Something like fate intervened, and Sylvain glanced up just in time to see a certain pair at a stall just up the lane, Annette and Felix side-by-side. Annette was swathed in orange wools that stood out as much as her hair, and she held up a leather satchel for Felix, who shook his head. Annette scolded him. Felix listened for a moment, attentively at that, and when she moved to the next stall and spoke to him again, he shook his head again. This carried on for a few moments. Sylvain felt his heart constricting with each little gesture. Felix was carrying her shopping. His free hand fluttered to her lower back every so often, so that she would not be brushed by a person pushing by them. They started to argue, but Felix was smiling.

"Ah," Ingrid said, following his gaze. Had she been trying to get his attention?

"For the love of everything, please don't," he warned Ingrid, but she started in their direction anyway. He tried to stop her, but it was too late. She called Annette's name.

Annette looked over and beamed at them. Felix looked up too, and Sylvain thought to dive into the salt cart and bury himself amongst the bags, but he found himself completely incapable of any movement. Ingrid walked ahead, greeting Annette with open arms. Sylvain's heart hammered, and he watched Felix exhale, his breath fogging on the air. Felix kept his attention to the girls.

"I see we're all here for the same reason," Ingrid said, smartly. "Felix. Do you know what you want for your birthday?"

Sylvain had seen Felix turn around and walk out of many situations in his life, and he almost expected Felix to do the same here, but he just sighed.

"Aren't we a little old for that?"

"You're never too old for birthday presents," Ingrid replied.

"See?" Annette said to Felix, looking up at him with a pinch to her eyebrows. "_See?_ I told you."

"A bunch of people saying it doesn't make it true," Felix replied.

Sylvain laughed along with Ingrid, and knew Annette was angling for his attention by the way she looked at him. He let her hug him, chuckling when he accidentally lifted her onto the balls of her feet. Sylvain caught Felix' eye again over Annette's shoulder, and this time, he thought he saw Felix shake his head. Maybe, anyway. It was so subtle he almost missed it. He'd never been more attuned to someone's reactions in his life. He'd also never felt more incapable of reading them.

"You shouldn't have rushed off like that," Annette scolded Sylvain. "I told you that you could stay! What if something bad had happened?"

"Sorry," Sylvain said. He had heard that already; Annette and Ingrid corresponded nearly daily, couriers taking letters back and forth across the city with daily pleasantries and disputes over what should be done and queries about coming to visit when either of them had a moment. He promised: "Next time, maybe."

"Good," she said. She still had a hand on Sylvain's coat-sleeve, and she held onto it when she turned back to give Felix a very pointed look. Did he seem like he was going to run away? Then she looked at Sylvain, who froze.

_Play it cool, _Sylvain urged himself. _Be cool. Be calm. Don’t scare him off. Don’t touch him, you're always touching his face. Don’t..._

“This is excruciating,” Ingrid said. “Get on with it. Say hello to each other.”

"Uh," Sylvain started. Felix said nothing, so Sylvain just supplied: "Hey."

"Let's not do that again," Felix said. He didn't look at Sylvain, not directly, and maybe that was that. He moved around Annette and walked around the whole lot of them, and that really made Sylvain think that was the end of it all. He shored up his heart. Maybe they weren't even going to be friends.

But ten steps up the busy market, Felix looked back over his shoulder and beckoned impatiently.

"Come on."

"What?" Sylvain uttered.

"Come on," Felix repeated

Sylvain felt one of the girls give him a shove by the small of his back, and he went stumbling after Felix. No one _needed_ to shove him, or at least he wanted to believe so. He might have followed even without, as every inch of him wanted to talk to Felix, but he never liked _we need to talk_ because _we need to talk_ had never ended well for him. Not ever.

Felix waited for him to catch up, and he said: "I'm not waiting until spring."

"Okay," Sylvain said. He nodded and smiled. He braced himself. He followed Felix through the crowds, and when a pushy family threatened to get in his way, he reached and took Felix by the sleeve so they wouldn't get separated.

Felix glanced at his hand and then took it in his own instead.

Sylvain thought to pull his away, but Felix's grip was firm. Sylvain imagined what it might feel like if it were spring and they weren't confined to their gloves. He didn't know why it felt like something to fixate on; he'd held Felix's hand before, hadn't he? _When?_

Felix shimmied between two stalls to get out of the main thoroughfare and Sylvain followed. When they were out of the flow of people and up against the relative quiet of the side of a building, Felix stopped him short and turned to face him. For a moment neither of them said anything, not for the lack of desire for silence, but entirely for the sense that whatever was about to be said was not going to be something they could unsay.

"I know what I want," Felix said, finally.

"Oh," Sylvain said, his heart twisting. "What do you want?"

"I don't want to tiptoe around you anymore," Felix said, very firmly. "This is stupid."

"Tiptoe?" Sylvain repeated. That wasn't what Felix wanted; not wanting something was entirely different. He wanted to resist the urge to compare Felix to anyone in his long and sordid dating history, but these sorts of things always ended with an ultimatum. He smiled as if it didn't make him want to shit his pants.

Felix shook his head.

"Don't be coy," he said. "Listen. I uprooted my life for you. I was happy to. You're my best friend."

Sylvain nodded. Felix waited for a reply. Sylvain no longer had anything prepared to say. He'd spent it all in the hopes that when they met again, he would be a different person. Self-explanatory. What was he supposed to say? _I spent the last little bit just keeping busy like a normal person? _Did he deserve compliments for not having fucked anyone for months, or rationing his wine intake, or something?

"We're still friends," Sylvain said, finally. Despite all attempts to be cool and calm and collected, a hopeful lilt snuck in at the end. He wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question. Felix didn't seem to know either.

"For fuck's sake," Felix sighed. "Stop trying to be cool."

Sylvain's smile faded, and then neither of them seemed to know what to say. Sylvain just watched Felix. He thought it'd be inappropriate to linger on the thought that Felix looked good, probably even better than before, but that thought snuck in, too.

"Sylvain," Felix said. "You were right. I _do_ have some things to work out. I need to figure out my place in this new world as much as you do, because maybe I _don't _want to live alone. I thought I did, but then you showed up in my life again, and suddenly…"

Suddenly what?

He was struggling. Sylvain gently clasped both of his hands between his own, and Felix held him tighter. It didn't feel entirely natural; Sylvain wasn't sure if he was being held or being held in place.

"I'm sorry that I don't know how to help you," Felix said, very quickly, like it hurt to confess to. "I can't stick a sword in your demons. I know I can't cut away our pasts. But I'm sorry that I didn't try."

Sylvain opened his mouth to console him, but Felix added, as if it might kill him to stop there:

"I'm sorry that I was worried about what would happen to me if you never got it together. I should have been worried about you."

"Hey, Felix," Sylvain said. "It's okay."

"It's _okay?_" Felix repeated, his voice sharp.

"Yeah," Sylvain said. "It's okay! Really. You went through a lot with Dimitri, with your father, everything. The last thing you needed was to go through it with me. _Again._"

"It's _not_ okay," Felix argued. "That's exactly what you need to be honest with me about. You came at me at the School because you were angry, right? So be angry."

"I don't want to be angry."

"When I left, I kicked you when you were down instead of talking to you. Instead of asking you what was going on, _I_ was angry."

"Sure," Sylvain said, dismissively. He twisted his hands out of Felix's grip, but he lingered close just the same. "But frankly, who hasn't? It's been a couple years of tough love for Sylvain. But so what? All that matters is that we're going to stay friends. So listen, what do you want from me? What do you want to know?"

It wasn't the kindest of offers. Sylvain could certainly not stand there all day revealing truth after truth, account after account of what had gone on with him, certainly no more than Felix could stand there and hear it. They had to get back to the girls eventually. They had things to sort out, separately and together, and Felix asking him questions wasn't going to resolve anything on the spot. They couldn't exactly cover all the missing ground between them in a busy marketplace. Felix knew that, and that was what had Felix pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache and the sense that they were going in circles, but he was desperate. Sylvain eased closer, and after a furtive glance at the market behind them, he said:

"I'll tell you anything you want. Anything."

Felix's gaze had dropped to his mouth, and Sylvain found himself rolling his lower lip between his teeth for an instant.

"Felix?"

"I wish you cared more about being mistreated," Felix said.

It burst from him hot, even scalding.

It was different to hear those words drop from someone else's mouth. Sylvain thought about telling Felix that, but he didn't.

"Felix," he said, instead. "I love you."

For a moment Felix said nothing, and Sylvain felt like he was being both crushed into the ground and buoyed by Felix's gaze at the same time. The corner of Felix's mouth quirked up, and the afternoon light made his eyes look soft, and he leaned back on his heels like he was going to turn and run. He was going to run, and Sylvain hated to let him go. Why the fuck did he _say_ that?

But Felix leant into Sylvain's chest, and Sylvain had his arms up and around him before he could even process what was happening. It was overwhelming. Sylvain felt like he was going to hit the ground himself but he was strong for the sake of prolonging that embrace. His mind emptied, his thoughts fleeing for safer ground, and he was left with something like revelation. He did not want to let Felix go after that.

He had never felt anything like that before, not like this, not even close. He imagined it was something like religious exaltation, or what it might be like to see the mountains of Gautier for the first time, or to have a first kiss. He drew a deep breath.

"I love you," he repeated, into Felix's hair.

Felix peeled his hands from his sides and then their lips met. Sylvain could not fathom how that came to pass any more than the embrace. The crowds of the market faded away, as did the winter and the cold, and the lives they'd led to that point, and all that had ever come to pass in Fódlan. Felix had kissed him, or he'd kissed Felix, and like every time before it, it didn't matter. When they parted, Felix was still there. Sylvain shivered. His hands found the sides of Felix's coat and held him, as if he might go off on his own again. He was crushing the grocery bag slung over Felix's shoulder. He hardly cared.

"Don't ask me to say something pretty in return," Felix said. He dropped his gaze, and then cast it to the market. The world continued without any attention paid to either of them, and that was comforting. Sylvain thought about kissing him again. "I already told you I've had feelings for you for a long time. That hasn't changed."

"Good," Sylvain said. He wished he had something prettier to say, too, but nothing that came to mind seemed capable of pinning down what he was feeling with mere words. He knew what he wanted to do, which was throw Felix over his shoulder and take him out to dinner and for drinks and to bed and then some, but words? _Words?_ What the fuck were words, even?

"We just need to be honest with each other," Felix said.

Rich coming from the one who was most definitely the most emotionally constipated of the two of them, but Sylvain nodded. He certainly couldn't claim to be the most truthful one.

"We do. We really do."

Felix sighed and rested his cheek against Sylvain's shoulder. Sylvain exhaled, long and slow, into Felix's hair. It had been washed recently. It was very soft. Sylvain made to nuzzle at him, but Felix gently moved from Sylvain's arms.

"We should get back, but I'll drop by the castle in the next few days," he said. "Then we'll… get to know each other again."

"Okay," Sylvain said, his breath utterly stolen from him. Sylvain thought he was going to despair the moment Felix passed from his gaze, but that was alright. Somehow, he knew Felix would, too. He thought about their lives together and their lives apart and decided one was much better than the other without a single doubt, and anything he might have felt in the past few weeks about them being parted was immediately overwhelmed by the knowledge that it wasn't forever.

They were going to figure this out.

Felix just nodded.

They walked back to their friends together, side by side, Felix having slipped back into his responsible and serious self, and Sylvain attempting to hide his glee. He did not succeed. There was no glory in success, anyway. The moment they arrived and Ingrid and Annette saw him, they both adopted looks of amusement. Annette hid her mouth behind her hand. Some topic floated in all of their minds, and yet no one was crass enough to point it out. Instead, there was more shopping to do. Errands to attend to. _See you again. Let's catch up sometime._

And Felix, right before he turned and left, smiled at him. It was small and subtle and dripping with relief, but it was there, and Sylvain felt it immediately sear into his mind's eye.

As Ingrid and Sylvain ventured back into the thick of the market, Sylvain feeling weak in the knees and giddy all at once, Ingrid threaded her arm through his, and she turned her green eyes on him with a childish impudence.

"So that went well," Ingrid said.

"Shut up," he said, fully grinning.

He got the inkling that their meeting in the market wasn't mere coincidence, but he didn't care. It was the first time, he thought, that subterfuge had ever resulted in anything _good._

_ _

"I'm just going to grab a snack instead of going to the dining hall," Ingrid said, as they got back into the castle. "I'm seeing my girlfriend late tonight, so we'll probably eat then. Want to come?"

"On your date?" Sylvain asked, and then, laughing as he was elbowed in the ribs: "Yeah, I could eat."

So they went down to the kitchens, where everything was bustling and preparing for an incoming dinner service. Ingrid was greeted warmly, heads turning and voices lifting. Sylvain was surprised to find himself recognized by a few of the older cooks, too, and one girl he'd met a lifetime ago, who took one look at him and dived into the buttery. Ingrid threw him a withering look. Sylvain shrugged. A couple people chuckled, and an older woman fixed them both plates that looked a great deal more like dinner than a mere snack. Ingrid thanked them profusely and led Sylvain back upstairs to her room, where they sat on the floor and ate with their fingers, ribbing each other about their differing friendliness with the staff.

"So what happened with Felix?" she asked.

"You? Gossiping?" Sylvain teased, not quite ready to come back to the topic. It felt too pure to tarnish with overthinking. He circled around her with a pleasant: "You're just trying to plan double-dates with you and Emilia."

"Amélie."

"Amélie!" he repeated. "I haven't gotten to meet her yet, so I'll share when you do."

Ingrid tossed a chicken bone at him. Sylvain batted it away with a chuckle.

"That's messy," he said, stretching out to retrieve it and trying his damndest to avoid having to get up in the process. "You're going to get the floors all greasy, and then someone will have to scrub 'em, and…"

"Fine, don't talk about it then," Ingrid said.

Sylvain grinned, popping a piece of potato in his mouth. It was firm, a little undercooked, and it could have used a hell of a lot more salt. Ingrid rolled her eyes at him for a moment and he relented: "We'll see. But it's good. He's going to drop by in the next few days."

Ingrid nodded.

"I'm proud of you," she said.

"Did you plan that? The meet-up?" Sylvain asked. He sort of knew already, and even if Ingrid denied it then, he would have felt right just seeing her expression. "It's okay. If you did, I'm glad."

"I spoke to him a couple days ago. I wanted to talk to him first to make sure," she said. "I didn't want another blow-up, and I didn't want you upset, and…" She gestured vaguely. "You know."

"I know," he agreed. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said. "And I chewed him out, too. Nothing he didn't agree with, I don't think, but I think he needed to hear that he's a stubborn asshole."

"He listens more when it's you telling him," Sylvain said. "But you didn't have to do that, you know. You've got so much on your plate without running around after us."

"You're both my favourite people in the world," Ingrid said. "I'm happy to help."

"Favourite? I guess I better keep that from Amélie!"

"You'd better!"

Sylvain chuckled watched her for a beat. She immediately busied herself with a mouthful of potato, which no doubt wasn't going to tide her over until dinner. Ingrid scoffed at him watching her.

"Did you tell him he kicked me when I was down?"

Ingrid paused.

"No," she said. "Why?"

He shrugged. He opened his mouth to brush it off, but then he thought not to, because Felix had asked him for honesty and maybe… well, he trusted Ingrid, didn't he? Maybe even more than Felix, in some ways, because Felix wasn't all that good at tenderness.

"I guess I'm glad he figured it out, then," he said.

Ingrid nodded. And then: “On that subject, I owe you an apology, too, though."

Sylvain frowned.

“For what?” he asked.

“When things are serious, you’ve always risen to the challenge and been what we needed,” Ingrid said. “When everything happened at Duscur, when Felix, Dimitri and I lost so much... you were the glue that held us together. And at the Academy, you got us out of the Blue Lions and convinced us to join the revolution. I'm convinced you saved our lives in the process. And during the war, you were the rock that weathered everything.”

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

“You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “It’s pretty understandable that you’d be mad at me for squandering that...”

“What? Sylvain, no,” Ingrid said, and she looked mildly distressed suddenly. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when you needed me. That's something Felix and I talked about. That we've both let you down.”

“You really don’t have to apologize.” Sylvain struggled to string together a better response. “Ingrid, you were there. You tried. It was my fault for not trying harder.”

“I was there at the end, maybe, but I didn’t realize how badly you were hurting until you were that far gone,” she said. She frowned. “You were all alone in Fhirdiad, and then again in Gautier, and Enbarr… you were being pushed around wherever people wanted you to be, and you needed a friend, and I wasn’t there enough.”

Sylvain wasn’t sure what to say to that. He felt a knot in his throat that would have prevented him from speaking even if he did. He realized that she was serious, and that this wasn’t some elaborate blame game that would circle back to him.

"Yeah," he said, "I guess so."

He paused.

"Do you want to read something?" he asked.

Ingrid cocked her head at him.

"Read what?"

"My journal," he said. "I can't… well, I can read it to you, I guess, but it's me saying it just the same. Would you want to read it?"

Ingrid hesitated. Sylvain understood why. A lot of fucked up shit went in journals, actually. A lot of things he hadn't really meant to tell anyone, and thoughts he didn't truly agree with or had tried to delude himself with, and things that were true but weren't intended to be said to anyone.

"Do you _want_ me to read it?" she asked.

Not really. Who would? But it wasn't just a whim, either, and he felt it was something he had to do. Ingrid looked a little hesitant, like the only thing keeping her moored in that moment was simple curiosity. He was sure she had her own journal. He didn't know a single person raised in the nobility who didn't keep some sort of journal; he was positive that if every one of them was rounded up and made into a single library, it would contain the worst of humanity, and would summarily have to be burned. In that moment she was contemplating what it might mean to share hers with him.

His silence was failing both of them. Ingrid pushed her plate to the side, and then his. She shuffled across the floor until she was sitting right with him.

"Why do you think it would help me to read it?" Ingrid asked. "When I said I want to know what happened with you and Dimitri, I meant at your own pace. Does me reading your journal really… _help?_"

"I don't know if it would help," he said. "I just… think maybe you'd understand better. Felix, too."

Ingrid nodded. Sylvain wasn't sure what else to say, but he suddenly felt very afraid of what he was offering.

"I think you should just take your time and tell us what you want, when you're ready," she said. "On your own terms."

Ingrid smiled at him, and she reached and thumbed something from around his mouth. Sylvain scooped her up, hauling her right into his lap for a hug, and she chided him even as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Thank you," he told her, muffled into her shoulder.

She pat his back.

"Any time," she said. She gave him a squeeze, and repeated: "I'm proud of you. I mean it. It's made me so happy to see you over the past few weeks."

He didn't think the first time she'd said she was proud of him had stuck with him quite like the second did, but he was happy with it just the same. Between that and some promise of Felix, he did feel good about himself.

Ingrid sighed and kissed his temple. He held her for a minute longer, and then she peeled him from her and got to her feet. He felt drained, flopping back on his elbows. He wasn't sure where to go from that, and she didn't seem to know either, so they exchanged awkward smiles.

"Amélie is coming here to meet me soon," Ingrid said, and Sylvain caught her drift: _scram._ Sylvain settled on gathering up their plates while she checked the front of her tunic for crumbs. Ingrid was immaculate — surprising for someone with her table manners. "Do I look okay?"

He got the impression that she was throwing him a bone to cheer him up, but she sighed as his gaze drifted pointedly over her loose tunic and fitted leggings. Sylvain knew what women liked on men, and it stood to reason that it wouldn't change much on women, too, even a girl as tomboyish as Ingrid.

"I have a suggestion," Sylvain said, cautiously.

"I asked if I looked okay," she warned. "I'm not changing."

"One little tweak," Sylvain offered. "One. Okay, two."

He was already on his feet and sidling in. Ingrid sighed and relented, holding up her arms like she was being inspected. Sylvain just loosened the bow of her shirt ties, and he wiggled the lacing open until he could see a generous bit of cleavage between the lattice. Ingrid went pink but let him tweak.

"So she knows you have tits," Sylvain said. "And tuck your shirt in."

"You're such a perv," she replied, but she did so.

"See?" He turned her around by her hips so she could see in the mirror. "Now you have an ass, too."

She swatted him away, but she lingered at the mirror, twisting at the waist to see that she did, in fact, have an ass. Ingrid sighed at him and tightened her belt a little more snugly. Ingrid had very nice thighs, too, courtesy of a lifetime of posting up and down in the saddle. Sylvain thought it was a massive crime that Ingrid did not take advantage of them more often. Hopefully her girlfriend would.

"If you don't get laid tonight, you can go back to being all tight-laced," Sylvain said. "But if you do…"

"Then what?"

Sylvain grinned, picking up the plates again to take them back downstairs with him.

"Then maybe you'll enjoy dressing up a lil'," he said. Her mouth bobbed open and closed like a fish. "Did you think I was going to say somethingdirty? Never! I respect you, and your relationship. A lot._"_

_ "Out,"_ she scolded, but she smiled.

He ducked out of the room, laughing as he skittered down the stairs.

_ _

Night fell. His laughter faded when he was alone again; the fire of his moment with Felix would dwindle if he didn't feed it. Sylvain returned the plates to the kitchen and then set out to find company for the evening. Linhardt didn't answer his door, and so Sylvain found himself wandering the castle for a little bit, feeling like he was in a whole different place than he'd been just a month ago, or at least like he was a different person. He didn't feel desperate. He wasn't looking for a place to hide, and the hallways no longer felt like chasms waiting to funnel something dangerous his way. 

He was headed to the second floor when he ran into a pair of knights, and out of habit, he looked straight ahead of him when they passed on the stairs. The stairs were narrow, not quite wide enough for two people to pass with a fair berth, and Sylvain felt the metal clang of something getting caught on his belt. That something fell. The knights stopped, as did he.

Edelgard's dagger.

"Oh shit," he said, and he went to retrieve it, but one of the knights was closer. He picked it up first and handed it back to Sylvain. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," the knight said. Sylvain was surprised to be acknowledged at all. There was an odd pause between them, and the knight looked at his partner and then back to Sylvain. He asked: "Gautier, right?"

"That's me," he said.

The knight just gave a polite nod of his head. For once, Sylvain didn't feel judgement. He thought that maybe his own efforts in the city was earning their respect — he wasn't just skulking around looking for a place to jerk off.

"A bunch of us are about to play some drinking games in the hall," the knight said. "Coming?"

"Aw," Sylvain said. "Thanks, but I've got something else to do. Another time."

"Sure," the knight said, and then the pair of them continued down the stairs. Sylvain lingered there a moment, Edelgard's dagger still in his hand. He wondered if he was making a mistake. They'd think he was stuck-up and distant if he didn't, right? And he hadn't had more than just wine with dinner for quite some time, so…

He opened his mouth to call after them, but not sound came out.

Better not push it, he decided.

He carried on up the stairs, slotting the dagger's sheath back into his strap as he went. It felt heavier, suddenly, and he thought of Edelgard. Ingrid was proud of him. Would Edelgard be happy with him, if she saw him now? He'd certainly made her mission a low priority in the face of his own evolving disaster.

With so much else in his life slowly taking shape, the things he had been avoiding were that much more obvious to him. More glaring. They were like nails sticking out of the floorboards of his life, and if he didn't tend to them, he'd rip a toenail on them before long.

_ Hmm._

His wanderings turned motivated and brought him to a familiar hallway. The stairs to Dimitri's room looked a little different in the dark, and more and more of the mess and rubble had been cleared away. The door was repaired with a single board over the crack he'd put in it, and Sylvain approached it and let himself in. The drapes weren't drawn, and the last dregs of dusk poured in through the windows. The box with the dancer costume was still on the bed; Sylvain put it away in the wardrobe, setting it atop a pile of folded clothes.

He thought he'd wandered there, but he knew, standing in that room, that there actually was something that he was looking for.

Sylvain went to Dimitri's skull collection. He still didn't know quite which was which, but he supposed he could figure it out if he tried and find the one that mattered. One was missing its mandible, which counted it out, and another was missing some teeth, smashed out where Areadbhar had slammed into them. The third was small, petite. Sylvain picked up the fourth with just his fingertips, and the cloth it was laid on caught on the underside and came with it. No matter; he held it up to the light and inspected it. He did the same with the fifth. He couldn't tell the difference.

Did it matter which it was?

Carefully, he settled on the fourth. It had a remaining piece of vertebrae that looked different from the others, and Sylvain could only assume that was the mark of decapitation rather than a head being parted from its body postmortem. Sylvain wrapped it up in the cloth it had sat on. He felt surprisingly numb, which he was sure was a sign that he had a lot more thinking to do. Something to put behind him.

Sylvain cradled the skull under his arm, carrying it like he might carry a baby. He let himself out of Dimitri's room, closing the door best he could with his foot, and he took the skull back to his room. There, he laid it in the drawer of the wardrobe. He would pack it up for Edelgard; he would either send it to her in the coming days, or hold onto it for her until she came to Fhirdiad to see the dungeon.

On a second thought, Sylvain put the dagger with the skull. Might as well, he thought. No sense in carrying it around.

He closed the drawer. He fetched his old journal instead, and a pen.

He had one more journal entry to write before he closed those pages forever.


	37. Up In Smoke

"Is Felix returning soon?" Dimitri asked.

Sylvain didn't know. Hadn't a fucking clue, actually, and it had left a pit in his stomach for weeks now._ Eight weeks,_ Felix had said. _Two moons._

It had been ten weeks.

If something had held Felix up, Sylvain hadn't been informed. If Felix had disappeared from Fraldarius and made for the border, then Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius had not admitted it to Dimitri's court. Sylvain had asked four times already, casually, and Duke Fraldarius had raised an eyebrow at him the third time and scolded him the fourth. He told himself that it wasn't strange to wonder where his best friend was, but he knew his concern was starting to boil under his skin, and that people would start to notice. There was no cause to be concerned for Felix, of course, as Felix could take care of himself, but every time he thought about Felix, his stomach twisted.

It made his stomach twist harder when _Dimitri _asked.

"You miss him, huh?" Sylvain said, low and playful. "Me too."

Dimitri snapped his book shut and rose to his feet. He set the book down on the table with a carelessness that never for a second seemed cavalier. Sylvain's gaze landed on the book's spine, at the worn brown leather binding and the fine gold leafing on the letters. Architecture books, one of many from the last week.

"I'm going to train," he remarked, and there was a testiness to his voice that had Sylvain nodding along. "But I must speak with Lady Rhea first."

"Sure," Sylvain said, smiling, even as Dedue rose silently and headed for the door. Dimitri followed. "Should I meet you at the courtyard?"

"That would be wise," Dimitri remarked.

What use did Sylvain have for wisdom when he had obedience in spades?

Sylvain was about to have a very unexpected day.

He did not know it at the time, but it was the kind of day that he would look back upon and ponder what he might have done differently, if only he'd had the gift of foresight. He would reflect on it often for a couple years, and then he would push it from his mind entirely, refusing to ruminate on it any more. What would the point be?

There was a memory of Garreg Mach that played over and over in Sylvain's mind that day. It was a moment in which he had felt a level of confidence and showmanship that he'd longed to tap into since. It was not, actually, the moment where Edelgard first planted the seed of self-direction in his mind. Nor was it the moment that he had realized that Dimitri was unmoored and needed his help.

It was when he'd been selfish. It was when he'd announced his departure from the Blue Lions, and his intent to study with the Black Eagles.

He thought about that moment often in Fhirdiad because despite having benefited from other people's restraint every day in his life, he found himself personally incapable of toeing the line. He did not go to meet Dimitri at the courtyard because on his way there he saw a girl he'd recently screwed and then screwed over, and he didn't feel like explaining a mark on his face if they had a confrontation. So his trip to wait in the courtyard became a detour before he caught up with Dedue outside the closed doors of Rhea's receiving chambers.

It was just as well that things went that way because it was a rare moment to be alone with Dedue without the pressing question of _where's Dimitri?_ Dimitri was safe inside — or at least as safe as one could be in the presence of the Immaculate One — and so neither of them was gripped by an immediate need to find him before something stupid happened.

Sylvain had always rather liked Dedue. Not a lot of people had his patience, or his stalwart sense of duty. Faced with all the reason in the world to leave, Dedue had remained without a second thought, and Sylvain admired that. He wished he had that ability to commit. That ability to maintain a very careful, very ruled sense that the world was unjust, and to not fret about one's inability to change things.

He wondered, sometimes, if Dedue would trade places with him. Maybe not, though.

"How are you doing?" Sylvain asked, quietly, leaning against the wall. Dedue wasn't much taller than him, and yet standing there, Sylvain felt like a sapling in the shade of a great oak tree. Dedue nodded very slowly.

"I am doing just as well as I can," Dedue said. "How are you?"

"Fine," Sylvain replied. "Well, not really. I'm in trouble with a girl again. You know, the one Dimitri scared the daylights out of the other day."

"Mm."

"Well, she's pissed at me over that whole thing, too, even though I did stop to make sure she was okay." Sylvain shrugged. "It is what it is, though, right? I can't change her mind. She's going to think whatever she wants."

"Likely so, but it may be time to curb your interest in the serving girls in His Majesty's service," Dedue said, quietly. "This is the fourth incident in as many months. It upsets them, and it upsets the king."

Dimitri would be upset over something whether it was a girl or not, and it was better that it was something petty than something serious like warfare, but he didn't need to tell Dedue that. They'd had many curt debates over what the best course was, and Sylvain had been on the losing side too many times to bring it up now.

"How long has he been in there?" Sylvain asked.

"Longer than usual."

Sylvain moved to the door. He felt Dedue's gaze narrow, but he didn't stop; he pushed the door open and peered through the hairline crack. He could hear Rhea and Dimitri talking, but their voices were still too low to make out. Sylvain doubted he would understand even if they raised their voices; Dimitri was sobbing, collapsed on the dais before Rhea's chair, his arms laid across her lap. He sobbed into her thighs, the great arc of his spine heaving as he muttered to her, his voice coming quick and shakily. Rhea bent over him, long tendrils of hair falling upon his back. Her hand roamed back and forth, as though Dimitri were nothing more than an oversized toddler, devastated at the loss of a favourite toy.

A large hand engulfed Sylvain's shoulder, as firm as it was fair.

"Don't," Dedue said.

Sylvain eased the door closed again, letting the thick wood slice the Immaculate One from his sight. His nausea abated, but only just. He leaned back on his heels, feeling the weight of Dedue's hand, pondering whether he should say something. That something was:

"Do you think we should be keeping him too busy to talk to her?"

"His Majesty finds a great deal of comfort in talking to her," Dedue said. He did not ask why Sylvain would ask, or to what end, or how. Just: "You're asking for trouble."

"Trouble?" Sylvain said, a little too flippantly. A smile slid onto his face. "I wouldn't be me if I wasn't at least flirting with it."

Dimitri emerged from the chamber more than an hour later, looking like he'd never broken his composure at all, save for the gloss to his skin and the damp roots around the borders of his face. There was no word on how late he was, and when Sylvain joked about how long he might have spent sitting in the courtyard, Dimitri did not acknowledge even a single word of what he'd said.

"We're late. We must train," he said, instead, casting his gaze ahead of him. He strode off. Dedue followed, and then Sylvain behind him.

Being late was something of a joke when his schedule was largely his own — but the fact that he had a schedule at all was something of a miracle. Sylvain had spent the past eight weeks helping Dedue assemble something of a routine for Dimitri, and at the six week mark, it had started to seem like it was paying off. He was combing his hair in the mornings and sleeping a little bit more, and sometimes could be cajoled into eating with others rather than alone. His presence at war councils was still largely a formality, but he'd been excused from them less often.

Sylvain hoped that Felix would see Dimitri's improved grip on reason and conclude that something could yet be done. And if he couldn't, Sylvain would simply keep trying.

In the courtyard, they stripped off their outer layers and stretched. Sylvain ribbed Dedue about his inflexibility, and Dedue gave a very scarce smile in return. They debated weapons; they settled on swords for the sake of keeping up their footwork. Sylvain was fine with that. They picked up swords. Real ones. Dimitri's idea. Sylvain laughed it off.

"Living on the edge, huh, Your Majesty?" he teased.

"If we didn't, we might die on it," Dimitri replied. The sky was cloudless that day, and under the sun, Dimitri was so pallid that it was nearly blinding to look at him. His hair caught the light like it was transparent.

Sylvain thought of Edelgard. The thought came up bitter. He'd refused her most recent letter, actually. She had been getting more and more terse with him, and he had had enough. She could wait a few days. She was a world away from him, anyway; what right did she have to tell him what to do? He'd been raised to serve one leader, one nation –– he couldn't do two, and unlike Edelgard, Dimitri was right there.

Dimitri scoffed suddenly. He gazed at the sword in his hand, at his own reflection in the blade.

"She was never all that good with a blade," he remarked. "Did you know she very nearly failed her certification for it? She'd never admit to it, but Claude and I were there when it happened."

Ah.

"She can't stand being one-upped," Sylvain said. "She has to have control over everything. What a bitch."

"She's always been that way," Dimitri replied. "But it doesn't matter. I'll show her how little control she truly has."

And then he swung.

Sylvain raised his sword to block, steel crashing on steel loudly, and Dimitri immediately swung again. Sylvain parried that one only to be swung at again. Dimitri controlled the flow of combat. _Here we go,_ Sylvain thought, bracing himself as Dimitri swept his feet out from under him hard, and scrambling back up just as fast. Dimitri did not hold back in training. Sylvain thought his own prowess could be solely attributed to a lifetime of going toe-to-toe with people who cared much, much more about this kind of thing. And to his fortune, a lot of those people chose not to punish him for his laziness. His tutors in childhood never would have struck him hard enough to break anything. His friends might accidentally knock him in the teeth and apologize, or crouch over him and pull him laughing to his feet. His professors would scold him, but even Byleth did not believe in harsh measures. 

And that, to an extent, was fine. There was a rule in sparring: _cut for stage, parry for real_. Sparring was like play-acting battle. One always struck with the intent of stopping the blade before it struck the other, and his partner always blocked as though it might kill them. It left room for error.

Dimitri's cut was tenuous. There was no true threat to Sylvain's life, no intention to harm him, and yet with every parry, Sylvain felt as though he were one slip-up away from a blade in some vital ligament or artery. That was thrilling. He couldn't explain it but it gave him a sense of pride in his life — not that he could die in the courtyard during a basic training bill, of course, but that there was an alternative to life that he wasn't quite ready for yet. And up against that mighty Blaiddyd blood, he was even permitted to push Dimitri in return. Sylvain fought back in a way he had never fought against Felix or Ingrid, and it was fine. Dimitri could take it. Dimitri didn't care.

In fact, it sort of seemed to make him happy, and Sylvain prized that most of all.

Dimitri almost chuckled, just a single _ha _off his teeth, and Sylvain felt his smile broaden. For an instant, he thought of being pushed harder. He thought of sparring with Edelgard. He thought of her—

Distracted by his own thoughts, he missed a parry.

Sylvain felt his sword knocked out of his hand, and it clattered to the ground. The impact had at least stoppered Dimitri's swing, and Sylvain's neck was spared a deep cut. But still, Dimitri returned with another stroke — he put the cold edge of the blade under Sylvain's chin. It was the kind of thing you weren't supposed to do unless you intended to slit someone's jugular, but Sylvain had lost count of how many times he'd been on the receiving end of it anyway. He, Ingrid and Felix had perfected the art of a dramatic chin-tilting with the blade nearly a decade prior over the course of a single weekend, back when Dimitri had thought it a little too dangerous to partake. That made it deliciously tense now, looking up Dimitri's long silver sword to the tension in his wrist, applying the slightest pressure against the underside of Sylvain's jaw. He thought he saw the slightest muscle twitch, the bulge of a vein. Sylvain thought he saw a smile tug at the corners of Dimitri's mouth, barely enough for a smirk.

That tension dropped when Dedue made a soft sound of acknowledgement, and Dimitri glanced over his shoulder. Sylvain shifted left with the blade as it drifted in towards his pulse. Handy, too, as it let him see who had joined them in the courtyard.

Felix, blade drawn, the tip just a foot from Dimitri's spine. His hair was down, which was a very rare sight. He was dressed to travel in thigh-high riding boots and a light gambeson. His expression was in the usual fashion — unimpressed.

"Felix," Dimitri said, sounding oddly relaxed. "Welcome back. It's been a while since you sparred with me."

Whatever Felix thought of that, he didn't put it to words, but it was clear on his face. He raised the blade by an angle, just to Dimitri's nose, and he raised his elbows higher. An unspoken statement: _I'm ready for you._

"Maybe you'll finally have a worthy one," Felix said. "Let Sylvain up and try your hand at me instead."

Sylvain felt every bit of longing for Felix swell in him and burst. Dimitri seemed unmoved, and then he withdrew his blade and turned it on Felix

They moved into combat so swiftly that Sylvain had to dart back to stay out of their way. Dedue frowned, lingering on the sidelines.

Dimitri was not so skilled at a blade as Felix was, but for what he lacked in finesse he made up for with strength and carelessness. Sylvain had seen for himself the growing unpredictability in Dimitri's movements, his tendency to blow too hard twofold in his tendency to take swings that lacked economy of motion, but also forced his opponents to make blocks outside of some natural range of movement. Watching Felix and Dimitri move across the courtyard had Sylvain's heart pumping faster than it had even in his own match, and on more than one occasion, he thought Felix was fucked, only for him to employ some equally brutish trick in turn — half-sword here, a bash with his hilt there. It did not stop Dimitri, not even when the blood flowed from his nose, but it did slow him down, and that was enough space to carry on. That was the kind of fight Sylvain liked best, actually. You could tap into a lot of strength in situations where you understood how much you'd have to pour into your attacker just to survive.

The longer it went, the more it made Sylvain uneasy, because outside of the action, it was too easy to let the adrenaline overwhelm him.

Felix lowered his sword behind him, eyes ahead. Dimitri advanced and swung overhead, and quick as a shot, Felix raised the blade to block. Before Dimitri could withdraw to strike again, Felix reached up and grabbed the other end of his own blade, ensnaring Dimitri's within his arms, and in the time it took Sylvain to blink, he twisted it down under his arm. Dimitri's blade was tight against Felix's padded jerkin, and Felix seized it by the cross-guard. Locked in place, Dimitri could not withdraw — he tugged, jerking Felix forward a step, but Felix had his own blade raised, poised to penetrate Dimitri's skull, right through his eye. Dimitri pulled harder, bringing Felix's blade—

Sylvain looked away sharply.

He needn't have. Dimitri snarled loudly, but it was not one of pain; Dedue had rushed in, and he stood with one hand wrapped firmly around Felix's blade, holding it a good foot away from their young King's head. Felix let go of Dimitri's sword, but he did not let go of his own. Sylvain got to his feet, worried that Dimitri might retaliate, but instead he stormed off. Dedue's attention followed the king, even as a brilliant streak of red slipped down Felix's blade. He wasn't wearing gloves.

"Release it," Felix ordered. "Before your damned hand comes off."

"Ease your grip," Dedue replied, curtly.

"Or what?"

"_Stand down_," Dedue ordered.

Felix bristled; Sylvain saw it run through his entire posture. Sylvain prepared himself to watch Felix get his teeth knocked out and found himself rushing in, but to his surprise, Felix relaxed.

Dedue let go of the sword. He closed his hand tightly to stem the flow, his gaze following wherever Dimitri had disappeared to.

"Are you okay?" Sylvain asked, concerned to see the blood leaking from between his fingers. Sylvain could not see how deep it had gone. "Dedue…"

"That was unnecessary," Dedue told Felix, sternly.

"It didn't seem that way to me," Felix replied.

Dedue walked off in Dimitri's general directly, his back straight and shoulders squared. He left a little trail of blood behind him: drip, drip, drip. Sylvain's gaze followed the little red droplets on the courtyard floor and he wondered if he should follow.

"Are you insane?" Felix demanded, even before Dedue was out of earshot. "Why are you letting the Boar put you under a blade?"

Sylvain sighed.

"I'm thrilled to see you," he said, but it came out much flatter than he wanted.

"You're not," Felix said. He glanced after Dedue, and finding him gone, he sheathed his sword and squared off against Sylvain. His voice dropped to a hiss: "You're an idiot."

"You were supposed to be back weeks ago," Sylvain shot back. It felt foreign to be angry with Felix, but what else was he supposed to do? Dimitri was upset, and anything that he and Dedue might have achieved over the past weeks had been dashed against the rocks. "I've been here trying to handle Dimitri—"

"I didn't come here to pick up where we left off, Sylvain," Felix cut him off. He sheathed his sword. "I came here to get you."

"_Get _me?"

"Yes," Felix said. His voice dropped a little, no less firm but more measured. "We're leaving. Tonight."

Felix held his gaze for a moment. Sylvain reached out and took him by his forearms; he wasn't sure if he wanted to pull Felix closer or push him far away. Both felt like appropriate answers. Felix felt so malleable under his palms, particularly after weeks and weeks of training with titans like Dedue and Dimitri, neither of whom would ever have suffered a hug. Sylvain's tongue felt frozen.

Felix's breath seemed caught in his throat.

There was a good foot between them.

"Relax," Sylvain said. "Let's talk about it."

"No," Felix said. "I want to be on the road again before my father finds out I'm here. We have to get your things and _go._"

Sylvain suddenly felt guilty. Felix could have just headed for the border and left, but it meant something, something small and weak but bright nonetheless, that Felix had come to Fhirdiad again, even if it was pointless. He liked the mental image of it all: Felix racing to Fhirdiad, no doubt trying to outpace whatever messenger might inform Duke Fraldarius that his son had vanished, all for the sake of seeing his childhood friend again. His hair flying on the wind as he rode. His name given at the gate, honest but without fanfare, and his pace staying steady knowing word would travel. His loose hair and simple clothes freeing him of a second glance moving through the castle. The sight of Dimitri's blade at Sylvain's throat.

"Okay," Sylvain relented. "You've had a long trip, huh? Come upstairs and rest in my room."

Felix breathed out, long and slow, and he agreed with a level of relief in his voice that Sylvain accepted. Maybe he thought Sylvain was agreeing, too, but Sylvain didn't clarify.

Sylvain's quarters were not too far. In light of the successful mission through Charon, he'd been liberated from his tower room and moved closer to Dimitri's quarters. It meant he was trusted, and it was easier to bring girls back to because there weren't a hundred steps to climb. Felix did not realize this, however; when he banked left to head to the tower, Sylvain had to snake his arm around Felix's elbow and redirect him. Felix threw him a questioning look and Sylvain just smiled.

"I moved up a little," he said, guiding Felix into his room and closing the door behind him.

Felix did not look happy for him. Instead he took a swift inventory of what was around them, and then went to the window and peered out. It overlooked the courtyard; if he pressed his face close to the glass, he could just barely see Dimitri's windows.

"My horse is still saddled in the stable yard," Felix said, curtly. "My father usually gets a report on the daily comings and goings at sundown. I think we have an hour or two to get out of here."

"Well, you sit down and rest while I pack," Sylvain said.

Felix shook his head, but he sat down anyway, sinking into an armchair by the fire. Sylvain looked around his room. He had plenty to pack, but he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be taking. In fact, he wasn't sure why he was upholding some ruse that he was going to pack — wasn't he supposed to be convincing Felix to stay?

Was there a point?

Sylvain pulled a pack out of his wardrobe and set it on the bed. He stopped there, staring at the open maw of the leather satchel. He heard Felix sigh behind him, not at him, but simply for being tired. Sylvain glanced at him. He had his elbows on his knees, his hands on his face. He looked exhausted.

He must have ridden through the night.

"Felix," he said. "Don't you want to rest? Lay down."

"If I do, I'll sleep," Felix asked, face still in his palms.

"That's kind of the point."

"Sylvain," Felix said, dropping his hands but his head still hung. His muddied boots must have been awful interesting. Sylvain lingered. "Don't pretend you're coming with me when you're not."

Sylvain paused.

"No," he said. "I just wanted to get you alone to talk a bit."

Felix crammed the heels of his hands against his eye, fingertips scraping through his hair. Sylvain eased over to him, sinking to his knees at Felix's feet, palms drifting to Felix's knees very gingerly.

"Hey," he said, softly. "I get it, okay? But I keep thinking of everything Ingrid lost by going back to the Empire. She lost her family, her title… her friends… her future with Faerghus. If you go, you're never going to be able to come back. Ever. Your father isn't ever going to forgive something like that."

"_My _father?" Felix said.

"Yeah," Sylvain said.

Felix pushed Sylvain's hands off his knees. Sylvain sat back on his heels. Felix's eyes were hard, but there was something about his mouth that wavered. Like he was one lip tremble away from bursting out a wail.

"I know exactly what I'm doing," he said. "I've made my decision. It's a hard one."

"Then I'm glad you came to say goodbye, at least," Sylvain said.

"Me too," Felix replied. Sylvain watched his gaze rove over him, so intensely that he thought he felt it. He shifted forward on his knees again. The finality of Felix leaving had just arrived, and yet it had already settled in him as an inevitability. Had he always been prepared for this? How many times had he been left before, anyway?

Soon he was going to have to start thinking about Felix as his past, the same way Ingrid was.

"Can I tell you something?" Felix asked.

"Anything," Sylvain said with a nod.

Felix hesitated. And then, soberly: "I knew you'd do this, but if I didn't come back, I wasn't going to see you again until it was on a battlefield. I didn't want you to think I'd abandoned you."

Sylvain frowned.

"It's not going to come to a battlefield, Felix," he said.

Felix shook his head wordlessly. Sylvain sighed.

"Okay, well, can I tell _you_ something?" Sylvain asked.

"Yes."

"I'm happy for you," Sylvain said. "Genuinely. And I don't think you're abandoning me. Actually, things are pretty good for me. We just have different paths in life, that's all. I believe in Faerghus. You don't."

Felix's hand curled into a brief fist, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

"You don't believe in Faerghus," Felix replied. "You're just afraid of walking away from your father."

Sylvain flinched, but he nodded. He smiled.

"Sure," he said. "But he's given me everything."

Felix didn't say anything to that, either.

"You're so miserable here," Sylvain said. "You _should_ go. Make your own path, forge your own destiny, that kind of thing. You've got the mettle for it."

"Please come with me," Felix replied, a hint of a plea on his voice.

"No," Sylvain said.

Sylvain shifted forward. He spread Felix's knees and knelt between them, leaning in to put his arms around Felix's waist. He felt Felix's breath hitch, but when he buried his face against Felix's chest and embraced him, draped into his lap, he felt Felix's arms settle across his back. Felt a tremble in his ribs. Felix smelled earthy, and he was warm, and a buckle on the thigh of his boot dug into Sylvain's ribs.

"I'm going to miss you, though," Sylvain said, into his jerkin.

"I'll miss you too," Felix replied, distantly.

Sylvain raised his head, Felix's arms draped around his neck.

"Well, it's not forever," Sylvain said.

It probably was. Sylvain knew it because Felix knew it, and then Felix pulled him up straighter, up to him. He kissed him. Sylvain didn't realize they were kissing at first — a stupid thing, really, a foolish thing — but Felix had never kissed him before, and he'd never really let himself think about kissing Felix before, and altogether it was — well, it was _confusing,_ but it also felt right. Fitting, actually. Felix's lips tugged on his and he thought of every time he'd never seen someone again after something like that, and though his heart rate shot immediately up, down it went again, steady as ever.

"Never got a goodbye like that from you before," he joked, against Felix's mouth.

Felix set his jaw real quick, and then relaxed again. Sylvain leant heavily into his lap. Felix's pants were so tight against his thighs that Sylvain could feel every inch of lean muscle. He wondered if Felix was doing this to comfort him. If so, it worked.

"Just like you to make it difficult," Felix replied.

"Come on, it's not that difficult." Sylvain grinned. "You made up your mind a long time––"

There was a knock at the door.

Both of them froze, and with mere inches between them, they decided, wordlessly, that it would have to be answered. Sylvain picked himself up and straightened his shirt, and when he reached the door he only opened it enough to peek out. He'd lie and say he had a girl in his bed, he thought.

Rodrigue was waiting there, flanked by two knights of Seiros.

"Your presence is required in the Archbishop's chambers," Rodrigue said, curtly. "Immediately."

Sylvain felt Felix move behind him, slinking across the room towards him to listen. Dread meandered in from his ears and settled at the back of his throat.

"Sure," he said. "What's going on?"

"We'll discuss that downstairs," Rodrigue replied. His voice had that tone to it, paternally firm. It didn't need to be threatening or foreboding to get Sylvain moving. He nodded, as enthusiastically as he could, but he hesitated to actually follow.

"Is my father here or something?" Sylvain asked.

"No."

"Okay," Sylvain said. He felt Felix's eyes on him, hard and warning, but Sylvain ignored him; best keep him out of sight. He slipped out the door and closed it behind him, and he gave Rodrigue a winning smile. "Do I get any hints, at least?"

"No, Sylvain," Rodrigue replied, and there was an underlying _cut that out. _Sylvain followed Rodrigue down the hall, and not two steps later, his bedroom door opened again. Both of them turned to see Felix following. Sylvain froze mid-step. Rodrigue did, too. "What are you doing here, Felix?"

"I just got here an hour ago," Felix replied, crisply. "What's going on?"

The conflict passed over Rodrigue's face, and then, continuing down the stairs, he just said: "You had best come along, too."

The first person they saw upon entering the chambers was the Archbishop herself. She stood on the dais, illuminated by the late-day sun pouring in through the stained glass. Her white dress was freckled with colour. She was radiant but furious, her brows knit into a steep slope, her lips pursed tightly. 

The second was Dimitri, his entire figure heaving. He was still dressed for sport, and he stalked up and down the length of the aisle. When he saw them at the door, he pivoted on his heel and marched back in the other direction, following the gathered line of knights.

The third person, most disconcertingly, was Alphonse. The man was kneeling on the floor, his wrists manacled behind his back. He was bleeding quite profusely from the scalp, but Sylvain could not tell how badly. When their eyes met, Alphonse's gaze never fixed on him. Sylvain wasn't sure if it was a ruse or if he was disoriented. Neither option bode well.

Nothing about this boded well.

"Sylvain, Your Majesty," Rodrigue said.

Dimitri continued to pace, but he glanced their way sharply. Sylvain had never felt a gaze quite like that before, and it snapped away just as fast when he walked to Rhea, who held a letter between her hands. She held it out to him and he snatched it from her fingers and marched it to Sylvain. Sylvain knew what it was before it was thrust in his hands. He didn't get a chance to look at it, either. Dimitri stepped so close their chests brushed, and he spoke directly into Sylvain's mouth:

"Perhaps you could explain why you've been communicating with a spy?"

Sylvain felt momentarily distracted by a droplet of spittle that had landed on his upper lip, but he didn't dare brush it away. He didn't dare move. He didn't dare lean from Dimitri's reach, or even look away.

"Sorry, what?" he managed.

Dimitri seized him by the collar of his shirt. His grip was strong; Sylvain thought his shirt might tear before Dimitri loosened his fingers. He did not resist for precisely that reason. Dimitri did not repeat himself, or elaborate. He just pivoted Sylvain to the side, so that he might look down at Alphonse.

He did not look down at Alphonse. He kept his gaze fixed on Dimitri. Dimitri's breath was a warm fog on his face, his eyes blown out in a way that reduced his irises to mere halos.

"I've never seen this man in my life," Sylvain replied.

Dimitri threw him. Sylvain caught himself without touching more than two fingers to the ground, stumbling back up some paces away. Dimitri followed, catching him by the back of his collar this time; as he was snatched up again, he caught sight of Felix, frozen at his father's side, his face twisted in a righteous fury. Dimitri directed Sylvain right to Alphonse, his grip absolute.

"Don't lie to me. Read the letter."

Sylvain looked down at Alphonse, but he couldn't bear to meet his eyes. With trembling fingers, he opened the envelope. A piece of the wax seal fell to the floor, and Sylvain did not hear it land over the sound of his own heartbeat, or Dimitri's breath in his ear. Sylvain opened it.

"Read," Dimitri ordered.

"_I'm done with this_," Sylvain read. His heart sank. He knew what he'd written, but he carried on: "_I don't take orders from you. This isn't school anymore. This is war, and I am_ _a man of Faerghus._" He swallowed hard. "_You may win the war, but you've lost this battle. Sylvain Jose Gautier._"

Dimitri waited, frighteningly still.

Was it foolish to be relieved that he'd been found out now, rather than several months ago? Years ago? How long had this gone on now, how terribly had his relationship with the new Emperor decayed? He'd never even known her as an emperor, not really. Only as a girl. And that remark about losing the battle — what a stupid platitude. He should have written something cooler just in case he got caught. When did he stop caring about getting caught?

He just knew he wasn't going to die for a mere girl, especially not one who he hadn't seen in years.

Dimitri shook him.

"Why," he hissed, "were you corresponding with her?"

Sylvain reached down into himself and grit his teeth.

"She reached out to me," he replied.

"And you chose to write to her?"

"I wanted to see if I could get information from her," Sylvain said, voice lifting as Dimitri dug his fingers in. He reached up impulsively, seizing upon Dimitri's wrist; Dimitri wrested him harder, and Sylvain held firm. "She_ thought_ she could turn me. Your Majesty— Dimitri— I told her _no._"

"So I've heard," Dimitri snapped. "But you said nothing of it to me. Tell me: are you protecting her? Do you think she'll _win?"_

"No," Sylvain retorted. His voice felt stronger, despite his fear. The idea of being executed or worse for the crime of wanting to protect one of his oldest friends, his King, was an indignity he could not bear. Dimitri wrested him harder, his time to his knees. "I gave you Charon," he added, rapidly. "I gave you Charon! You repelled her. You held her off."

Dimitri's grip loosened, if only marginally.

"Months ago, in Charon," Sylvain said, quicker. "I knew— I thought I could feed what she gave me to help fend off the Empire. I didn't tell you because I didn't want her to suspect I was passing on that information."

Dimitri was silent. Sylvain wanted to turn to see his face, but he stayed put, teeth grit.

"Do you believe him, King Dimitri?" Rhea asked, her voice shattering the terrible intimacy of one man subduing another.

Sylvain glanced aside at her. Her chin was raised.

Dimitri released him.

"I do," he said, firmly, but he didn't sound like he believed it.

"So be it," Rhea said, and she didn't sound like she believed it, either. Still, she levelled her eerie pale eyes upon Alphonse, and she remarked: "But that doesn't resolve the issue of a spy in your midst. The spy who would have Edelgard _destroy _me, and you as well."

"You're right," Dimitri said. There was a pause that Sylvain felt down to his bones. Then Dimitri drew his silver sword, the blade glinting in the light. He looked at it for a moment, and then he offered it to Sylvain. "Prove yourself."

Sylvain met Dimitri's eyes.

"Prove myself?"

Dimitri gestured at Alphonse with it.

"This spy would have that bitch destroy our Kingdom," he said. "He would have her storm our borders and seize our lands and bring ruin upon our people, and the Church that we protect. She would end my life and my line, and destroy the Archbishop who our people swear fealty to. Who I swear fealty to."

Sylvain looked at the sword. Dimitri offered him its hilt, the black leather bindings worn but the silver pommel and cross-guard polished to a shine. Sylvain saw his distorted reflection in it, and he reached and took it. It settled in his hand like any other sword, but it felt weightier. Deadly.

Sylvain looked at Alphonse.

Alphonse met his eyes this time. The blood oozed down his forehead, off the ridge of his brow. It puddled in the smile-lines of his cheeks and curved down his chin. One eye was bruised. His shoulder seemed off, set lower than the other. His lips parted. Whatever he muttered, Sylvain couldn't parse it.

It might have been _do it_. It might have been _don't._ It might have been anything.

Sylvain shifted the sword to his right hand. It was a proper longsword, and stood on its end, it might have gone from Sylvain's navel to the floor. A good blade. He paced closed to Alphonse, the tip inches from the floor. He'd never felt a blade like this rend his own flesh, but he'd stuck it in that of others. If the blade was well-maintained, it would be a clean stroke. The real damage was in the withdrawal, the void left in a body once the blade had been removed.

He walked around to Alphonse's side.

It was not something he did lightly.

But he knew better than most what Dimitri was liable to do if he refused. It wasn't just his skin. It was Alphonse's, too. He'd seen Dimitri on the battlefield, after all. There was no reason to believe that he would be more merciful. There was no reason to believe he would be quick. Sylvain knew that the only happy ending left was as painless as possible. And even then, who better to dismiss you from this miserable world than one's kin? One's people?

Someone who understood what you were doing, even if you no longer believed in it?

Alphonse looked up at Dimitri, and then at Rhea.

"Long live a united Fódlan!" he declared.

Sylvain raised the blade over his head.

The next thing Sylvain was aware of was Felix's hands on him. 

Shaking him.

"We have to go," Felix hissed, right in his face, inches from his mouth. "I don't care what _stupid_ fucking excuse you have, I don't care how much of a coward you are, if you're strong enough to do that, you're strong enough to run."

Felix sat back. Sylvain realized they were in his room again, and he was sitting in the armchair. Perhaps sitting was a generous word; he was slouched in that armchair so far that his ass was nearly off the end of it, and he hauled himself up at that. Felix was perched on one armrest, bearing down on him.

The memory of what had happened returned to him later, but in that moment, he had nothing. No concept of what had possessed him to agree to that, or what had moved him back to his room. It mystified him, because that first moment of consciousness immediately after felt no different.

As if he'd never laid the stroke of the blade at all.

And then he remembered that he_ had._

"No," he said, despondent. "I… I really can't, now."

Alphonse was dead. What had he done?

He immediately thought of Miklan. He thought of his brother's flesh, rough like cleaved stone on the top, smoothing out into a leathery expanse of musculature below. An almost human shoulder, mangled as it was, soaked in tar. Sylvain had not imagined his lance-head could pierce that flesh, much less reach the beast’s heart. He had, somehow.

_Somehow._

How was he capable of that much destruction?

Something he had known forever gobbled him up in one sudden bite: if he hadn't transferred to the Black Eagles, he wouldn't have killed his own brother.

"Fuck," Felix breathed.

Sylvain thought Felix was weeping.

"Sylvain," Felix said, his voice angry. "I _have_ to leave. You're not going to be able to get out of here unless you pull it together."

Sylvain hauled himself from the chair, pushing Felix aside. He dragged himself across the room to his bed, where he sprawled out like a corpse. Felix followed, crawling over him; Felix grabbed him by the front of his shirt. Sylvain was too slow to push him off. Felix straddled him and gripped him by his shirt and hissed:

"Are you even listening to me?"

Sylvain did not hear the rest. "I'm not going," Sylvain said. "Tell Edelgard she ruined my life. Tell her it's her own fault. Tell her I hate her."

Felix looked at him, stunned.

"_What?"_

Sylvain felt like he was living on another plane of existence, perhaps dead and in hell where no one could judge his choices anymore. Maybe Dimitri had accidentally cut his jugular in the courtyard and this was some strange fantasy pasted over the experience of bleeding out: Felix coming to see him one last time, begging him to save his own skin, kissing him—

Sylvain had never had that dream before, but at that moment it existed in full colour, as tangible as Felix's scalp under his fingers. It was as real as every time they'd ever brawled, pinning each other in the dirt, or every time they'd slept in the same bed, ignoring what it might mean to not roll away from each other. Sylvain decided he was awake and breathing because he heard Felix make some desperate, choked little noise as he rose to his feet and walked away.

Maybe Dimitri had killed him in the Archbishop's chambers — or no, maybe the Archbishop herself, maybe she'd strode across the dais and descended on great leathery wings, and taken him between her teeth and gnashed his body into ribbons, and now Felix was leaving—

Whatever happened, Sylvain woke up alone, with a throbbing headache. His own vision seared his brain the moment, he sat up, desperately searching the bed for someone who wasn't there. Something glass shattered when he knocked it off the bed, a spray of bottle-green shards skittering across the floor.

Felix was gone.

"Get up," Dimitri ordered, from the foot of his bed. "We have a war to plan. Edelgard will pay for taking our friends from us."

Sylvain just rolled over and puked over the side of the bed.

Sylvain put down his pen. His fingers felt stiff from writing. His journal was nearing its end, and it tilted the bound spine: the back end of the book felt unbalanced by the weight of the front. He flexed his fingers experimentally as he reread what he had written. 

It was ugly, but it was true.

He blew on the ink, and then closed the journal. He took a deep breath and braced himself. That was everything up that point, up until Felix had left. He had run out of things to say about his sadness, and he was done with the story that his friends already knew.

Sylvain glanced at the fireplace. The fire had long wound down, leaving him writing by candlelight. It must have been after midnight at that point, the hours vanishing under the nib of his pen.

Journal in hand, he moved to the fireplace. He crouched at its hearth. He could feel the glow of warmth off the red embers, little spots of red deep in the blackened husks of the wood. It was still cold, and he thought to put another log on, but the fire was too low to catch.

He opened the journal in his lap and tore out the first page, and then the second. He cast them to the fire, and they smoked and blackened before catching alight. He tore out more, and more, feeding the fire until it was knee-high, consuming the pages as quick as he could offer them. Joseph, whoever that was, went up in flames, and then so did his school days, and his time in Fhirdiad, and every bad moment he'd committed to paper.

It didn't matter to not have them on paper, as he felt sure those things would stay in his memory forever, but it felt peaceful to watch the flames take them. It felt right for those parts of his life to drift upwards and away, vanishing into the chimney.

Sylvain went to bed feeling light as smoke.


	38. Independence

Sylvain expected his day to be very, very busy.

It seemed to him that they just kept getting busier all the time. It also seemed to him that it should be impossible for them to continue at some point, as there was surely a point where every moment of his day was occupied and nothing more could be pencilled into his new schedule, but so far, it didn't seem to be true. If he wasn't busy, he was sleeping.

On that particular day, he had breakfast with Ingrid and Linhardt, and then he had to run exactly one errand on Linhardt's behalf. Without him, this time, which was fortunate because it would take half the time to run over to the nearest hospital and collect a bunch of things if he wasn't dragging Linhardt along for the trip. He'd gotten rather adept at managing those sorts of errands, too. Even if he didn't always understand what the hell they were talking about, he learned fast and made up for it by having a good head for people.

That said, even without Linhardt, he was tempted to dawdle — the weather had taken a sharp turn towards spring, and it was an unusually bright spring for Fhirdiad. The clouds rolled overhead in great wooly masses, their dark undersides shading the city and the tops as white as snow. If Sylvain stopped to look at them and trained his eyes on the rooftop of a building or a chimney or one of the castle's tall towers, he could just barely see them moving, drifting south towards the border. It was a lovely sight, and the people loved the turn in season; Sylvain saw couples venturing out together in the slush and snowmelt, holding hands and making eyes at each other. They were tasting freedom from the confines of their crowded homes for the first time in months. Give it a few more weeks for the last of the snows to melt and people would be taking to the fields and the alleys and the rooftops to make love.

_Me too, _he thought, gleefully. _Fingers crossed._

They were draining the castle dungeon that afternoon, or whenever Annette managed to get there. Sylvain was looking forward to it — not so much what was down there, but rather because Felix would likely tag along, and though he and Felix wrote back and forth at least once a day, Sylvain hadn't seen him in the flesh in a week.

That thought was going to get him through this entire day.

After that quick errand, he had to stop by another building to pick up some papers from the commissioner. Those would go right back to the castle to wait on Ingrid's desk. When she got back from her own appointments, they'd be waiting for her to sign off, and then Sylvain would take them right back. Normally he would go alone, but Ingrid was taking him to a meeting right after. Some locals from the last few independent states of Faerghus were planning to petition Edelgard for funding — Gautier being amongst them.

Sylvain was, admittedly, a little nervous about it, but he'd learned quite a few hard lessons about avoidance.

"I'm going to be devastated when you finally give up on that horse, you know," Ingrid said as they tacked up their horses. That was something she said almost every time they went out, and every time there was a little more fondness to it, but he knew she was still only saying it to distract him.

"Imagine if horses could retire," Sylvain replied, lifting his chin up sharply when Horse jammed her face against his chest; she very nearly could have bloodied his nose. "Just live out the rest of their lives on some quiet farm, lazing in the meadows. Huh, girl?"

"If only," Ingrid said. "You might as well sell her to some family out in the countryside looking for a carthorse for one trip into the market a week."

"Naw," Sylvain disagreed, "I'll con Edelgard into taking her, she has a big fancy stable."

Ingrid swung into the saddle. Sylvain did the same.

"Speaking of Edelgard," Ingrid said. "Letters arrived from Hubert today. The snow has finally let up enough to travel, so they should be here in a couple weeks' time."

"Oh good," Sylvain replied. "I was worried they'd get here before the dungeon was drained, and then I'd look like a slacker."

He flashed Ingrid a grin. She rolled her eyes and smiled, and she turned her attention momentarily to the gatekeeper, who waved them through. They passed into the city. Some people stopped to wave at them. Ingrid moved the reins to one hand so she could wave back, and then she fished a letter out of the breast pocket of her coat. Sylvain leaned out of the saddle to grasp for it, and she passed it to his fingertips.

"This one is for you."

He glanced at the seal on the back — Vestra, naturally, in black wax —and thentucked it away in the front of his own coat. He'd read it later.

"This is their first trip here since the war," Ingrid said. "I don't really like having only two weeks left to prepare for that."

"I doubt she expects us to roll out a parade in her honour," Sylvain replied.

"No," Ingrid agreed. "But it still matters. I want her to see this place improved. It needs to look like the seat of a real kingdom, one that she thinks might be able to stand alone. I'm sure she has a good picture of it from me, but I don't know what Linhardt writes, so—"

"Stop worrying," Sylvain interrupted her. Ingrid frowned at him. "Really. There's nothing to worry about."

Edelgard's roster of allies and territories had never been particularly typical or traditional, after all; that woman could find potential in even the slimiest toad. Edelgard did not expect hospitality, and Sylvain doubted she would have much patience for banners sewn in her name or stage-plays enacting her victories, nor would she expect anything on the same level as Enbarr. Fhirdiad would need at least another decade for that, Sylvain figured, as it was starting in a drastically worse position.

But it wasn't terrible. If he could see that, he didn't see how Edelgard and her sharp eye for potential could miss it.

"Ingrid, you've done a great job," he informed her. "If she doesn't see that, she's lost her fucking mind."

"Can you please talk about her with a bit more respect?" Ingrid scolded him. Sylvain shrugged. He could, but he also knew Ingrid liked having opportunities to mother him, and he had to throw her a bone here or there. She continued: "Anyway. Are you ready for this?"

She meant the meeting, of course, but there was a note of caution in her voice. He felt the same way.

"Sort of," Sylvain said.

"It'll be quick," Ingrid promised. "It's just a brief meeting to see who is serious about it, and who is willing to contribute what, and then we'll get back to the castle."

"Hmm," Sylvain hummed.

"It can't hurt," Ingrid said, which was about the worst way to sweeten the deal Sylvain could imagine.

He didn't want to go, but he needed to know what the people of Gautier wanted from the world.

The meeting was held in an inn on the west end of the city, which like most city inns, was a crowded and cramped place even on the best of days. Sylvain might have been glad for it, as it afforded him a particular anonymity in the crowd, but Ingrid was unmistakable. People greeted her like royalty, which they always followed up with a dubious look at Sylvain. They were still polite to him, but they didn't seem entirely sure about his presence. By the fourth or fifth time it happened, he was about ready to turn invisible just to hear what was going to be said. It left him with a terrible feeling that he hadn't felt for some time — that people were looking for his name and bloodline more than anything else about him.

He almost preferred getting his ass kicked in the street for being a Gautier to being tolerated for his utility to them. He'd avoided people from Gautier on principle his entire time in Fhirdiad just to dodge either experience. Faced with some interest in the restoration of the land, Sylvain wasn't sure what to do, or whether it was his business to even be involved. Edelgard had first offered it to him as payment for finding Felix. He'd been too offended at the time to consider how stupid it was; given what she knew about him and what she didn't know about him, why on earth did she think he was capable of taking up his house again, even with supervision?

Listening to conversation back and forth about it, he didn't feel any less confused on that note, or any more welcome. Ingrid slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and glanced up at him questioningly, to which he just nodded. He was fine.

He just wasn't sure of what he was supposed to do with the information.

Many of the territories around Fhirdiad had never quite _agreed_ to be a part of Edelgard's empire, but they had never put up enough fight to be brought to heel by force, either. All of them had existed in a state of suspension for many years, some with more loyalist tendencies and the others simply disinterested in acceding. There was no sense in trying to reclaim Faerghus on their own, as their leaderships had been overthrown in one form or another and their armies had been well depleted by time Edelgard took the Alliance and moved North towards the Church's seat. And they'd all seen what had happened when the former Margrave Gautier had tried to make a stand a mere week after Fhirdiad had fallen. Who truly preferred to die rather than find another way? Even the people of Faerghus would gladly take a lifelong grudge over a swift defeat.

It wasn't the first time Sylvain had heard rumblings of making a bid for proper independence, however. In the past few weeks, it had come up several times. All of them were poor in both coin and resources, and sometimes even in population. Edelgard would happily take them, Sylvain was sure, but they could not claim independence without giving up what little charity they received, and that would have to be remedied.

They would need some form of trade, or something to set themselves apart. The land was seldom arable, so save for some auroch and other livestock farming, what else did they have? They had the manpower to lend their service to other areas, but then their region would never grow beyond what it was, and Edelgard had little use for more soldiers in times of peace.

It was something Sylvain thought about a lot but had never really positioned himself within. And though he knew his reputation still had many years of healing to do, it was strange to think some people might be thinking of him when the subject came up, and stranger still to think that some people might_ want_ him there.

"What about salt mining?" he said, when the conversation dipped low.

For a moment, he thought he might be ignored, spoken over, but instead he felt every eye turn to him. Ingrid's, too. She looked a little surprised. Fair, he supposed. What did he actually know about mining? That thought immediately spooked him.

A debate immediately broke out.

It still wasn't his business, he swiftly decided. He was out. He ducked his head just enough to inform Ingrid of so, and she frowned but she did not make to stop him, so outside he went. The fresh air felt doubly good as it had first thing in the morning, and now with a bit of early afternoon sun, spring really did seem like it was just around the corner. Sylvain unbuttoned his jacket, letting it fall open. The rush of cool air on his throat and upper chest tickled him, and it penetrated his silk shirt so comfortably he thought to take the jacket off entirely, but instead he just leant against the outside of the building and waited a bit.

Someone else stepped out — a woman. She had fiery red hair and he could tell just by looking at her that she had a mouth on her. He was quite sure she'd followed him, but she only flashed him a smile in return before whipping out a tobacco pipe from her coat pocket and setting it up to smoke. Sylvain said nothing, and for a moment, either did she.

She finally said: "Lord Gautier, isn't it?"

"Hardly," he replied. "Call me Sylvain."

"Ah," she hummed. She held up the pipe. It was nicer than he expected. "Do you have a match?"

He didn't, but he gestured for her to lean in anyway. She did so, and he lit it with the tiniest touch of magic. She withdrew and took a drag off of it. Smoke curled out her mouth.

“Don’t be so nervous,” she implored him. She was very pretty, and he wasn’t sure if he should find that comforting or terrifying. A nasty, crawling thing in his mind told him to flirt anyway, but swallowed his breath and smiled instead.

“I’m not,” he said. "What's your name?"

"Brigitte," she said. _No family name,_ he thought, which felt like an obfuscation. She didn't look too much younger than him. She looked him up and down, and he sized her up in turn. He wondered what she believed about him, and whether it made him better or worse in her eyes. He wondered if ten or fifteen years ago, she'd ever thought about marrying him.

"Should've kept my mouth shut," Sylvain said, gesturing vaguely behind them. "I'm not very popular."

"It's not the worst idea," she said. "My family is trying to start a mine up near the Sreng border. My husband was called away from it for war, but we have hopes to reopen it."

"But you need the funds," Sylvain said. He was, in that moment, glad that he was dressed somewhat modestly, at least for the station he was born into. He also felt very embarrassed that a handful of years ago, he could have resolved her problem on a whim without further question. He would have, actually. She was very pretty.

But she did not ask. She just looked away from him, letting out a long, smoking breath, and then she said: "You know, my parents used to prepare me for conversations with you when I was growing up, but we never met. And then we don't even get a formal introduction! All those years of finishing school put to waste."

"Yeah?" Sylvain said. "Well, sorry for wasting your time."

She smiled. Ingrid popped out the doorway then, and Sylvain glanced at her briefly. Brigitte didn't acknowledge Ingrid at all.

"It's fine," she said. Was it? Sylvain gazed off into the street for a moment. He could feel the woman appraising him, and then she said: "Interesting to see you're just some guy. The stories are bigger than you are."

Sylvain shrugged. She offered him the pipe and he took it, took a drag, coughed, and then handed it back to her.

"Isn't that how it always is," he said. "Did you get married off to someone nice, at least?"

"Yes," she said. "But only because I eloped."

"Well, good for you. I hope your parents were furious," he said. "If it makes you feel better, I'm currently seeing a man, so there're probably a lot of pissed off parents all over the place."

She laughed, loud and uproarious. Sylvain chuckled, too.

"Good for you," she said. "Stick it to them."

Ingrid cleared her throat.

"I plan to," Sylvain said to Brigitte, then turned his gaze to Ingrid.

"We're done," Ingrid said. She cast a sideways glance at Brigitte, and then back to Sylvain, seeming a little exasperated. "Time to go meet Annette and Felix."

"Yeah," Sylvain said. He straightened up. He gave a lazy little bow of his head. "Nice meeting you, Bri."

"Nice meeting you too," she replied. She took another drag off her pipe, and Sylvain gave her once last smile before heading off with Ingrid.

"Who was she?" Ingrid asked, the moment they were out of earshot.

"No idea," Sylvain said.

"I wish I had even half the rapport you have with people you _don't even know,_" Ingrid remarked, near exasperated. "Would you come back to the meeting next week?

"Maybe," Sylvain said, even though he didn't feel particularly inclined to. He glanced back towards the inn. The woman was sorting out her pipe and heading back inside, even as other streamed out, talking in twos or threes, no doubt trying to decide to do with their own futures. He glanced at Ingrid. "Actually, sure. I'll go."

She gave him a questioning look.

He didn't really have an answer, but he shrugged.

"I kind of owe it to them, don't I?"

"Kind of," she agreed, but he could tell it went a little deeper than that.

Sylvain nodded. She linked an arm with his and squeezed him.

"Cheer up," she said. "We're going to have a nice time tonight with our friends."

"Uh huh," Sylvain replied.

"Please don't be weird."

They returned to the castle before Felix and Annette arrived. It was not an insignificant amount of time — perhaps half an hour or maybe more, if the pair were delayed for some reason — but it was certainly not long enough for Sylvain to do anything productive with it, which condemned him to waiting and thinking, and in waiting and thinking, he could grow a little too nervous. Maybe agreeing to hearing talk about Gautier hadn't been a good choice on a morning before descending into the dungeon, which was a place that already made him feel somewhat powerless. 

He distracted himself by thinking of Felix while he sat with Ingrid. He'd last written Felix that very morning, just two lines jotted on a scrap of paper with something like _fucking help me if some dipshit at the meeting today tells me they're only bothering with me because I personally know Edelgard. Can't wait to see you, though!_ Felix hadn't replied, which hadn't surprised Sylvain but had still prompted him to gripe about couriers who ran in and out of the castle all day. Something he sent at nine in the morning should surely arrive by noon, shouldn't it? That was plenty of time for Felix to get it and respond before heading over. _You know, in Enbarr, the mail comes three times a day—_

Ingrid threw her pen at him.

"Get out of my office," she ordered.

Away Sylvain went, laughing a little, and though he still had plenty more gripes in him, he went up to one of the upper balconies, as the weather was nice and he thought he could watch the gates from there. Sylvain could see quite easily over even the higher ridges of the parapet, but even so he climbed up on it. It was very deep, and as a boy he'd often thought of sitting up on it to get a better view, but now as a man nobody was going to pull him off by the scruff of his collar. He did not let his feet dangle, instead propping them up against the next ridge, and he looked down upon the castle's front yard and watched the comings and goings of knights and merchants making deliveries.

Up there in the fresh air, his head cleared a little, but Gautier still lingered in the distance, unavoidable. Still nothing conclusive came to him other than the idea that he wasn't ready. Nothing about it compelled him to take the risk, and nothing about his own life compelled him to grasp for more.

And he thought of the dungeon, too, and what the crest of Gautier might be there for.

Then there was a small party coming through the gates, just a rickshaw pulled by a runner and two people seated within. Sylvain knew it was his friends immediately, even before he saw Felix's dark hair lean out from under the awning. Felix paid the man and then turned to help Annette off. Annette flailed an arm when Felix got impatient with her trying to navigate the step down in a floor-length skirt; he simply picked her up by the waist and set her down. Sylvain chuckled. Apparently he wasn't the only antsy one that morning.

Sylvain put his fingers to his lips and whistled. The sound pierced the air and he felt just about every set of eyes in the area wheel around looking for who had done it. Annette spotted him, and then Felix did. Sylvain waved. They did in turn.

He ran back downstairs, taking the steps two at a time. By time he got there, Felix and Annette were in the front hall. Felix was helping Annette out of her cloak. It amused Sylvain endlessly to see Felix fussing over this tiny nervy woman, but it drove him a little crazy, too.

(That wasn't a conversation he was looking forward to, either.)

"Hey," he said, very casually.

"Hey," Felix replied.

"Hey!" Annette squeaked.

Annette hugged him, as vice-like as always, and then it was Felix's turn. Even the most brief, polite hug from Felix in public was about as intimate as being kissed deeply on the mouth by just about anyone else. Sylvain let his hands slide from Felix's back, down to settle on his hips. Felix didn't say anything, but he did glance away, as if such a thing was too showy for him. Sylvain grinned.

"Are you guys hungry?" Sylvain asked. "Lunch?"

"We already ate," Annette said, as she pulled off her gloves by the fingertips. "Let's get that dungeon drained and then we'll have all afternoon for fun."

She was so matter-of-fact that Sylvain didn't feel compelled to complain about his empty belly, and she smiled at him very tightly. Sylvain knew she was at least a little nervous. He couldn't be certain what kind of nervous that was. Knowing Annette, it could be anything from _what if I forgot my entire magical training and cannot perform this task_ to _did I remember to lock my door_ to _what if I really don't like what's being served for dinner but then I have to eat it to be polite_. It could also, realistically, be_ I must now witness my ex-lover perform some elaborate and incredibly awkward mating dance with a man not only dumber and less accomplished with me, but who is also twice my height._

He was trying not to be self-centred about it. He knew a lot about Annette, and he knew a lot about Felix, but he knew a whole lot of nothing about their relationship to each other. It made him jumpy to imagine all the ways he might be in a competition that he was undoubtedly the underdog in. Ingrid had told him several times to be calm about it, but in that very moment, he wasn't sure that was possible whatsoever. It almost didn't matter that he was, ostensibly, _with_ Felix in that very moment. He was on new territory. He wasn't sure whether he should go around marking it, or just wait for her to leave.

Felix gently redirected Sylvain's hand from his hips and headed off towards the dungeon. Sylvain had forgotten they were still there, but it was just as well; he and Annette followed, too. Right now to business, he supposed.

"Not going to chicken out, are you?" Felix asked.

"Not on your life," he said, following. "I'll have you know I go down there every other day to check the water level."

"Descending stairs and drawing a chalk line," Felix said. "Incredible."

Sylvain chuckled.

"There's actually a little bit more to it than that." There wasn't, at least not tangibly. "But I suppose you're very busy doing… what, exactly?"

Felix scoffed.

"Nothing at all," he said, and though he said it very tersely, Sylvain could see something deeply amused behind his eyes. "Does it make you happy to know you're doing more than me?"

"Yeah, actually," Sylvain said. "Delighted."

"He helped me re-organize the library the other day, actually," Annette said. "And he still trains every morning."

"You're slouching," Sylvain replied. He elbowed Felix. "You could always run errands with me all day. It's not that boring."

"Very compelling," Felix said, dryly.

But he nodded as he said it, and Sylvain didn't feel too bad about that at all.

The business of draining a dungeon was a great deal more complicated than Sylvain had imagined. He supposed it was rightfully so; water did not simply vanish into thin air, at least not in those amounts, and it was no small feat for even the sun to dry up a pond. The growing lake under the castle might have taken a small army countless hours to carry up, bucket by bucket, and as the snow melted, the water level had only grown higher. 

Draining it required what seemed like an atrocious amount of not only spells but also mathematics, and though Annette had prepared much of it in advance, there were still a number of small variables that had her fussing over her notes and a number of books while the rest of them puttered around setting up proper lighting. Linhardt helped as well, going up and down the stairs at a pace that might be considered normal on another person but seemed wildly energetic from him. He flipped through books for references and went over Annette's annotations with an unusual perkiness.

He tried to imagine what Edelgard might look like in a pique of excitement. He couldn't conjure it.

While Linhardt and Annette fussed over the process and Ingrid and Felix bickered about what they might find, Sylvain waited. Sylvain thought that everyone was more enthusiastic about getting to the bottom of the dungeon than he was. All he could do was wait for something to appear to him. With enough torches and as close to the water as he could be, Sylvain could almost see down one of the long hallways and the thick stone archways demarcating different rooms. Would the crest of Gautier loom out of the darkness at him? Would some beast spring up from the depths?

Would they find nothing at all?

"Just as well we're doing this now," Ingrid said, coming to his side. She squinted into the abyss. "If it's done that much damage to the foundation, this castle could be crumble any summer now."

Sylvain was not so sure he would have minded that, but he supposed it wasn't fair to wish ill on what was a home and a legacy to many just because he had a complicated relationship with the old stones. He could burn his journal, but he couldn't wash away a castle.

He wondered what people would do for this sort of thing without talented mages around. Simply not live there, perhaps? Dig more ditches and other earthworks, as the more rural areas attempted? He vaguely recalled something about Gautier's coffers being nearly emptied one spring when he was a small child, as a particularly rainy season had caused the bills for drainage and flood defences to rise dramatically.

His mind was all over the place.

"Do you think we'll find anything?" he asked.

"Who can say?"

Who could say, indeed?

Even after the appropriate measures for set-up had been taken, draining took some time, the water vanishing into voids of light, the lot of them huddled at the top of the stairs as to not be in the way while Annette worked. Sigils of light haloed her every few minutes until she needed a break, and the water dropped step by step. After some effort, it was largely empty, but with no known source of the leak, the floor still had a few inches of water, and Sylvain had no doubt it would rise again by morning.

"I'll have to give it another go in the morning," Annette said, clearly worried. "I hope that's okay."

"That's fine," Sylvain said, pretty sure that an extra night waiting might take a few years off of his life, but there was nothing to be done if Annette was spent. She even looked a little woozy moving back up the stairs, and before Felix could get to her, he offered her his own arm.

"Thank you," she said. "I feel bad, if I'd prepared a little better…"

"There's no way you could figure out how deep this place goes," Sylvain said. "It's great you got it that far! Really. In a couple hours you did more than I've done in months."

"Sylvain," Annette groaned. He could feel the guilt radiating off of her, and then he started thinking about how foolish he was, and that was it for him. He decided to leave her to Ingrid, who went upstairs with her for tea. He wanted to poke around a little more, anyway.

"Not going with Annette?" Sylvain asked Felix, as the girls retreated down the hall.

"Are_ you _staying?" Felix asked, equally surprised.

"Yeah," he said. "Want to look around?"

They couldn't really go far, as six inches was bound to soak through their boots, but Sylvain got as far as the very bottom step. From there he could see further into the dungeon than he had before, and the light from his torch showed him a number of large wooden timbers that had been erected to assist the stone ceiling, and some of them were rotted out. In a couple places he could see cracks between the stones, places that had been home to dripping icicles just months before.

"It's actually in better shape than I thought," Felix remarked, squinting into the distance. Sylvain nodded. "I thought we'd be dealing with more collapsed walls, at least," he said. "But who knows. Maybe deeper in."

"Maybe," Felix agreed. He paused. "Any theories? I can't imagine why they sealed it off, rather than just fixing it."

"A couple," Sylvain said. "Linhardt has been looking through what records he could find, and it all goes back to when Fhirdiad was under construction, after the plague happened. There wasn't money to fix it that year, so I think it was only supposed to be temporary. Spend a couple years doing what Lady Cornelia recommended, and then take care of it."

Felix hummed.

"Anyone who knows anything about this seems to be dead or gone," Felix remarked. "Except for Edelgard."

Sylvain nodded. He glanced back at Felix. He was about to reply when Linhardt appeared again at the top and announced:

"Let's just go in. I don't want to wait until morning."

"No way," Sylvain called back. "That water's ice cold. You'll lose your toes."

Linhardt did not seem bothered by such a fate. He came down the stairs towards them, again with that unusual enthusiasm, and when he reached the two of them, he paused to hitch up his pants at the ankles, revealing multiple pairs of woollen socks bulging out the tops of his boots.

"You can't be serious," Sylvain said.

"I'm going to go as quickly as I can," he said, briskly, and then he strode into the water.

"You fool," Felix snapped, reaching after him but missing. Sylvain winced, but nothing he or Felix could say or scold Linhardt with came close to the punishment of standing in that water. Linhardt strode away, torch in hand, and Sylvain wasn't sure how far he was going to get before the water hit his skin. Leather and wool would only go so far, after all.

"It's fine," Linhardt said, dismissively, and by then he was completely out of either of their reach. Sylvain glanced at Felix; Felix shook his head.

"Well, tell me what you find," Sylvain called after him. "Don't go too far, I don't want to go in after you."

Linhardt just waved his free hand in acknowledgement and kept walking away, the water sloshing with each step. He came to one of the corridors and he poked his head in. Sylvain knew he was going to go in anyway. Why wouldn't he? He was Linhardt, and nothing was going to get between him and some knowledge. If it wasn't a death sentence, he was sure Linhardt might have swam months ago just to go looking. Of course Linhardt would go, vanishing from their sight and into a far room.

"Man," Sylvain called after him. "If I have to go in there after you, I'll kick your ass."

Linhardt replied with something that Sylvain didn't quite catch. A few moments passed, and then the light from Linhardt's torch vanished from the doorway, either because it was extinguished or because it had just rounded some corner. Sylvain could still hear him sloshing around, and then there was a telltale yelp.

The water had penetrated his boots.

"Can you get him?" Sylvain asked.

Felix sighed.

"Yeah."

Sylvain watched Felix go through the very physical process of steeling himself, and then he stepped forward into the water. He marched off through it, his steps quick, and he vanished around the corner, too. Sylvain waited, listening to the shuffle of water and shouting of names, and then he heard something like a scuffle, and loud protests from Linhardt, and then Felix reappeared with Linhardt slung over one shoulder. He brought Linhardt to the stairs and deposited him like a sack of flour, which made Linhardt complain more.

"I swear," Felix scoffed. "Edelgard could tell any of you to do anything and you'd just do it, without a trace of self-preservation. Idiot!"

"Forgive me for thinking some things are more important than wet feet," Linhardt retorted, but the damage had been done. He sat on the steps and set about unlacing his soggy boots, and his socks came away wet. Sylvain couldn't see it, but he could certainly smell it, and nothing short of being set by the fire for a couple days would do anything to dry wool once it was submerged. He shivered just thinking about it.

"We'll go down in the morning when Annette's finished. Anyway. Thanks, Felix," Sylvain said, belatedly.

"Any time," Felix grumbled, but when the three of them headed back up the stairs, he slipped his hand into Sylvain's briefly, just long enough to squeeze it, and then it was gone as soon as they reached the light of upstairs.

The five of them elected to eat dinner in one of the parlours, which was not a decision taken easily: there was some debate over eating on one of the balconies to enjoy the spring air, which their Adrestian companion wasn't going to tolerate, or eating in the dining hall, which some amongst them protested to be too busy. It was the first meal that the five of them would take together despite having been in Fhirdiad for months, and possibly one of the larger gatherings of Black Eagles since the end of the war, and that deserved some sort of special. There was no grand feast or candles, or even a proper dining table, but there was something charming about being grown men and women sitting around a tea table, elbow-to-elbow, their trenchers tessellated just to fit them all around the tabletop. Sylvain thought they were one careless move away from someone having a drink in their lap, but no one else seemed to mind. Even Felix, perpetual sourpuss, seemed more relaxed than usual, and Linhardt forgot his cold feet in favour of a gentle debate about something Sylvain didn't feel like getting into, but Annette and Ingrid had some fun with.

Felix sat across from him. Sylvain watched him finish his meal and sit back from the table with a glass of wine in hand, watching the conversation go on with a completely blank expression. His mind was clearly elsewhere. They were sitting so tightly together that Sylvain couldn't be sure a nudge under the table would be guaranteed to be Felix, so he was left with watching Felix plaintively. When Felix finally noticed, his amber eyes flicked to Sylvain's so precisely that Sylvain knew he'd deliberately been left waiting.

And then he felt a familiar foot nudge his calf, and the corners of Felix's mouth turned up. Sylvain smiled, too, and Felix lingered a moment and turned his gaze back to the conversation.

"Edelgard doesn't want tributary states, though," Ingrid said. "Not long term, even if it's just symbolic. Sooner or later everyone is going to have to be independent, because sovereignty either exists or it doesn't."

"But that's going to happen entirely on her terms," Annette replied. "I think that's a little unfair. We were a really poor Kingdom even before the war, she can't expect that to be different now."

"Sure she can," Linhardt remarked. He was leaning an elbow on a table, which took up valuable real estate, and he seemed to be slipping into a coma, food or frost or otherwise. "She's Edelgard. She expects the best."

"She always expects the best," Ingrid said, in a tone that suggested she was tireless about this. Annette sighed.

"House Dominic should join the bid for independence," Felix said, flatly.

Annette sighed again, louder this time. Sylvain got the distinct impression they had had that debate many times before. Felix did not try again; he'd landed the blow.

"What about Fraldarius?" Sylvain asked.

"What about it?"

"Do you know what they're doing?"

"No," Felix said. "It's not my problem. Do you know what Gautier is doing?"

"Kind of, actually," Sylvain said.

Felix looked a touch surprised. Sylvain felt like immediately retreating.

"Sylvain went with me to the meeting today," Ingrid said.

Sylvain was rather pleased to not be outed for having left part-way through, but it was enough of a vote of confidence for him.

"Well, then what is Gautier doing?" Felix asked.

"We're -–" He faltered and continued: "They're joining the bid. They know it's pretty hopeless and that they don't have anything to offer, but I think Edelgard will appreciate that they're trying. It shows effort, right?”

“I suppose,” Felix replied. “Is that what you really want?”

“It’s what they want.”

“I know that’s what_ they_ want,” Felix said. “That’s why they’re doing it. What about _you?_”

Sylvain felt everyone at the table drooling at the prospect of a straight answer. Felix's expression was indecipherable, even for Felix, and Sylvain felt cautiously optimistic that it wasn’t one of their usual debates. Ingrid looked poised to change the subject as the moment lingered on longer than necessary.

“Well,” Sylvain said, “maybe it is what I want. I’m going to go to the next one and get a feel for it.”

“I guess I'm just surprised,” Felix said. “You’re not a politician.“

“I don’t care about what I’m not,” Sylvain replied. “I care about what I can be instead, and what I want to be is helpful. That’s what I decided.”

“And I don't think Sylvain's committed to anything yet,” Ingrid pointed out. "He's just trying it out, Felix."

“I just don't think he should take risks on something like that.”

“Everything I could do is a fucking risk, babe,” Sylvain argued.

All of them froze. Sylvain watched Annette and Ingrid's gaze move very abruptly from him to Felix's reaction. Linhardt's eyebrows raised very, very high. Sylvain looked into his wine glass instead.

“Sorry,” Sylvain muttered. “It slipped.”

“It’s fine,” Felix said, curtly.

Did it slip? Was it fine? Sylvain’s heart skipped a beat. For another moment they lingered in that not-entirely-uncomfortable feeling, and then Sylvain decided to put it to use.

“If it scares you, come with me,” Sylvain said.

Felix shook his head.

“It doesn't _scare _me,” Felix said. He sighed. “But I'll think about it.”

Sylvain smiled.

"Alright," he said.

“And_ I_ think I’m going to go to bed,” Linhardt said. As he rose, his sleeve caught his glass, which would have tipped if both Sylvain and Ingrid didn’t lunge to steady it. If he noticed, a Linhardt said nothing. He simply walked off with a waved hand: “goodnight!” A few of their remaining party chuckled, responding in turn.

“I think I might want another glass of wine,” Annette said. “If you’re still okay with us spending the night, that is.”

“I insist,” Ingrid said. “It’s much too late to head out now. Stay with us, we'll be irresponsible and stay up talking. I’ll either bunk in with Sylvain and you two can have my bed, or we can split up.”

Sylvain immediately hated himself for wanting to burst out a panicked _split up_, but he caught it on his teeth. In his mind, there was only one right way to decide on sleeping arrangements, but fortunately, he didn’t have to.

“We can split up,” Felix said. “Good luck, Ingrid. She kicks like a horse in her sleep.”

“You’re the worst!” Annette moaned, sinking lower in her seat, but she promised Ingrid soberly that she’d try to keep very, very still.

“It’s fine,” Ingrid laughed. “Better than Sylvain. He’s a snuggler.”

For a moment, all four fell silent. Sylvain wasn’t sure if it was awkward; maybe it was just _new_ for everyone, and in that instant, he missed his old self, who might have taken that little quip as an opportunity to make some raunchy comment to lighten to mood. To get everyone on his back so that the tense stuff could be ignored.

The Sylvain of that moment just smiled, feeling Felix’s eyes on him.

"Well, why don't we clean up here and then go sit on a balcony for a while?" Ingrid suggested. "It's nice weather."

“Felix and I can handle the dishes, if you two want to go on ahead,” Sylvain said.

"Not at all," Ingrid replied. Sylvain watched her flash a look at Felix, but he wasn't sure what it meant. Felix didn't react at all.

The girls headed off, and Sylvain busied himself with the dishes so that he would stop examining everyone else's reactions for clues. He started stacking glasses together and rearranging the plates and cutlery so that it would all fit together in a neat pile. Felix stepped in to help. Sylvain glanced at Felix. More specifically, he looked at Felix's hands, busy assembling a stack of plates. He did it all wrong, not emptying the scraps onto the topmost plate, so the stack was all wobbly. Sylvain set about fixing it. Felix chuckled.

"What's so funny?" Sylvain asked, and he couldn't help a smile. "Huh?"

"You," Felix said.

"Me?"

"Just you," Felix repeated.

He reached in and took the plate from Sylvain's hands, setting it back down again, right on top of the bones. Sylvain made to protest, but Felix didn't let him get that far. He sidled in, a hand going to the back of Sylvain's head, and he kissed him. Just as well that he'd taken the plate — Sylvain might have dropped it otherwise, or he wouldn't have his hands free to pull Felix into him.


	39. Remain Calm

Ingrid and Annette had made the coziest little conversation circle that Sylvain could have imagined possible in Faerghus: a lounger and two sorry-looking arm chairs dragged out onto the balcony, each draped in wool blankets. When Felix and Sylvain arrived, the girls were already settled on the lounger, and Ingrid set about pouring them all wine. Sylvain took one of the arm chairs, skipping the blanket entirely — it was still a decent bit above freezing, and he felt just fine without. He imagined everyone else would feel the same in a little bit, with the glow of alcohol in their systems, and though Ingrid gave him an appraising look, he would, too. It was fine, he decided. A couple glasses would floor Annette, but it wouldn't do much to him.

Still, Ingrid only poured him half a glass. Sylvain tried not to take it personally.

"I can't believe that guy," Felix remarked.

"Who?" Ingrid asked.

"Linhardt," Felix said. "It's not that cold out."

"Be nice," Annette chided him. "It _is_ a little chilly still, and he's never lived anywhere this cold."

"He's lived here since before I returned," Felix replied, a little tersely. "That's plenty of time to acclimatize. He's just not trying."

"Be nice!" Annette repeated.

"Yeah, Felix," Sylvain interjected as he shucked off his own jacket and draped it over the arm of a chair. The cool air was wonderful and he was plenty warm after being inside for a while. "Be nice. He doesn't have any meat on his bones. If he didn't wear a coat, he'd just die."

"Ridiculous, that someone so soft ever went to war," Felix remarked, and he picked the blanket off his chair and tossed it at the girls before taking his seat. "Here. Keep warm."

"Thanks, Felix," Ingrid remarked dryly, but she smiled as she arranged it over her lap, too. Sylvain bit back a smile.

"I was thinking the other week, Felix," Sylvain said. _Hahaha, you, thinking?_ "You and Linhardt are actually a lot alike. I think you gripe about him because you have a lot in common."

Felix immediately fixed him with a deadpan look. Sylvain grinned, and he scooted his chair over so that he could put his feet up on the edge of the lounger. Ingrid gave his boots a pointed look but he ignored her, and she made no effort to push him down.

"How?" Felix asked, very carefully.

"Well, for one, you don't mince words," Sylvain said. "And I'm not saying that's a bad thing!"

"I think I'm a little more reasonable than Linhardt," Felix said. "I'm not as rude."

"Barely," Ingrid remarked, smiling.

Felix sighed, but Sylvain saw a touch of a smile on Felix, too. He was humouring them, no doubt.

"Some people need to keep all you romantics and dreamers out of the clouds," he said.

"Isn't that the truth," Sylvain hummed.

"Sylvain!" Annette said, curiously. She sat forward on the lounger, the blanket puffing up around her. "I was just asking Ingrid what you plan to do after the dungeon gets figured out. She told me I'd have to ask you!"

"I'm going to need a top-up for that question," Sylvain told Ingrid, and he was unsurprised to be ignored. He settled a little deeper into his seat. "I don't know yet. I'll probably stick around, though. I don't have anywhere else to be, and I'm hoping Edelgard will give me work. If she doesn't… I guess I'll go wherever work is."

"It'd be nice to see you more," Annette said. "Enbarr is so far away!"

"I don't think she'd keep me that close," Sylvain said, a little amused. "But maybe I'll just go back and forth. That way I can see everyone."

"Good," Annette said. "You've been such a stranger! That's not good for you, you know."

Didn't he know it. Sylvain smiled, taking a small sip of his wine just to draw the moment out.

"I'll stick around if I can," he said, finally. "Depends on what we find tomorrow, really."

"What do you think we'll find?" Annette asked.

Sylvain paused. He wasn't sure if Felix or Ingrid had told her what Edelgard was after, and if they had, none of them had the right to share what Edelgard had said to him and Felix. He was sure that, in her shoes, he'd be sore if anyone ever repeated a thing about his childhood.

"Apparently there used to be some living quarters down there," Sylvain said. "She just wants to know if they've been destroyed. Other than that, I don't really know."

"That's so strange," she remarked. "It must be a big deal. I wonder if my father knew.”

She said it very casually, and not the kind of casually that Sylvain used as a shield. She said it like it was something she could wonder about without feeling grief, and that made him feel a little uneasy. Sylvain wondered what that was like. Both Felix and Annette had fathers who had seen their defection as cause to kill them, to send them into the afterlife with some modicum of dignity still remaining. A merciful slaughter, filicide for the greater good.

_Don't do that, _he scolded himself. _Don't think about dark things. This is a nice evening._

He wondered if Annette and Felix had bonded over such a thing.

"It doesn't really matter, wondering like that," Felix said. "We'll know the answer tomorrow morning. And then we can figure out what's going on, and we can put this whole thing behind us… ugh. I'm so glad she asked you instead. What a pain in the ass."

"Haha," Sylvain teased. "You know who else talks like that? Linhardt."

Felix rolled his eyes, but the barest hint of a smirk played on his mouth. Sylvain reached over and nudged him in the side of the knee with his foot, and Felix had to work harder to hide the smirk.

"Shut the fuck up," he breathed. "I'm not that much like Linhardt."

"Oh, stop ragging on Linhardt," Ingrid interjected.

"I'm not," Sylvain said. "I'm ragging on Felix."

"You're like Lorenz," Felix replied.

Sylvain didn't dislike Lorenz, exactly, but he hissed like it might have been a deep cut anyway. He laughed: "No way. I'm nowhere near that good looking."

"You're both like watching Hanneman and Manuela argue," Ingrid said.

Felix snorted. Sylvain chuckled.

"I'd look good in those heels," he declared.

"Every single weekend was another spat," Annette said, almost wistfully. She folded her arms against the lounger's side and rested her chin upon them. "He had to step in for her seminars so many times, but sometimes just because she was running late, and she'd run into the classroom all dishevelled… and one time, her nipple was out."

Annette and Felix almost had a laugh at that, but Ingrid did not, and Sylvain got the immediate impression that she had regretted drawing the comparison at all. Sylvain grimaced and elected to just raise his wine glass in silent cheers, which was very nearly empty. That tragic half-inch of red liquid was going to be his last of the evening, and he certainly wasn't going to be given more. He hoped that Manuela, wherever she was in Enbarr, would sense his tragedy and drink in his honour.

"I've thought about Manuela a lot, lately, actually," Sylvain said. "Did I ever tell you I once found her passed out drunk in the infirmary, so I carried her to her room and put her to bed?"

"I do remember that, actually," Felix said. Sylvain recalled what he had told Felix at the time and was silently grateful that Felix didn't repeat it now.

"She was... wow, she was drunk," Sylvain said, a little cautiously. "I knew she did that a lot, but she said something to me about how that's what she did when she was sad, and it stuck with me. It taught me something really bad, too."

"Which was?" Ingrid asked.

"You can be an accomplished professor, physician and songstress and still be miserable," he said. "And worse, if you did all those things well, it didn't really matter if you were a drunk as long as you kept it behind closed doors."

Everyone was silent for a moment, and Sylvain cursed himself for opening his stupid mouth and letting something awful come out to ruin the mood.

"Did you see her, when you were in Enbarr?" Ingrid asked, carefully. Maybe she wasn't sure if he wanted to keep talking about it, much less talk about it in front of everyone. He wasn't sure if she wanted him to or not.

"I didn't," Sylvain said, as smoothly as he could manage. "I thought about it, but I didn't go. I was too much of a coward. I was worried she'd be the same as back then, too, and then I wouldn't have any reason to change, either."

Ingrid nodded.

Annette unfolded herself from her cozy slouch and reached across the void to him. She put her dainty little hands on one of his knees and looked at him dead in the eyes and said: "Well, you've changed, haven't you?"

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

"Well, yeah," he said. He paused. "I think so."

"Then I hope that Professor Manuela's gotten to change as much as you, too."

Sylvain looked at Annette's hopeful smile and nodded.

"Me too," he agreed.

Despite her thought of them being irresponsible, Ingrid fell asleep shortly before midnight, slouched against the backrest and openly drooling on the upholstery. Annette announced her intention to go to bed shortly after that, and they exchanged their goodnights briefly. Sylvain thought to walk her to Ingrid's room, if not to be polite than to have a chance to talk to her alone, but Annette declined him. She knew where to go. Whether she was dodging him or genuinely unconcerned was a mystery that he did not try to solve.

When the door closed behind her, Sylvain sat quietly with Felix. It wasn't an uncomfortable lapse in conversation — truthfully, Sylvain appreciated a moment to collect his thoughts, and Ingrid's dull snoring broke it up a little. Felix busied himself with what was left of the wine, tipping what was left of Annette's abandoned glass into his own, and collecting the bottle. Sylvain supposed it was natural for someone who lived in the goddamn woods to be frugal, but it was funny nonetheless to watch a fellow former nobleman be so mindful of a few mouthfuls of wine.

"Do you want some?" Felix asked, as he topped up his own glass.

One more wasn't going to hurt, but Sylvain didn't much like the temptation regardless.

"Sure," he said, anyway.

Felix split the remainder. Sylvain supposed he needn't worry or feel guilty; it wasn't very much at all, certainly not for a man of his size. They drank for a moment in silence. Sylvain drained his first and watched Felix nurse his own.

"What?" Felix asked.

"So… you and Annette," he said, very carefully.

"What about me and Annette?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" A pause. "That you were together."

Felix shook his head. He seemed resigned to the conversation. If no one had told him it was coming, then maybe the topic wasn't meant a secret at all.

"It didn't work out, and it happened while you were gone, anyway." Felix favoured his words for a moment. "And obviously we're still on good terms, so it just didn't seem like it mattered. I don't know. I thought someone would have told you."

"Ah." Sylvain didn't know what to say, but he did know how he felt about that. His next question came out tentatively: “Why didn’t it work out?”

“I’m not that attracted to women,” Felix replied, very curtly. "Maybe it would have been enough, but..."

He shrugged.

“Oh.” Sylvain wasn’t sure what to say. He found it difficult to wrap his head around the concept, personally, but it didn't sound all that unrealistic of Felix. It did surprise him to hear it said out loud. “That’s fair.”

“It didn’t feel very fair at the time,” Felix said. “But I'm glad that we stayed friends.”

"Yeah?" Sylvain replied. "Me too. And it was two years, right? That's not nothing. I've never been with someone that long. My longest time being with someone is now."

"Where are you counting from?" Felix asked. Sylvain felt himself laughing — and then he _wasn't_ laughing, because Felix looked a little serious about it. He faltered. He couldn't remember the last time someone he'd been seeing had managed to put him so thoroughly on the spot.

"I don't know," he managed, smiling. _With Felix, it's just like sparring, _he reminded himself. It had been that way for a very long time. "When are _you _counting from? Because _I_ think we've been together a lot longer than two years."

"Really?" Felix replied, and he smirked.

"Yeah," Sylvain said. He wasn't going to walk it back now. He couldn't. "All in? You and me are a lot longer than two years."

Felix shifted forward in his seat, just to sit at the edge, where he could angle himself towards Sylvain better. Sylvain stayed where he was, determined to be cool, which was a thing he had surely never been in Felix's eyes, not even once in his entire life.

"I know you hate being jealous," Felix said.

"Can't stand it."

"Then don't be," Felix said. "You're just embarrassing yourself worrying about something that has been over for more than six years. Besides… you didn't care at all before you knew."

Sylvain opened his mouth to point out the obvious flaw in logic, but Felix was smirking at him, and Sylvain knew exactly what he was doing. He sighed, but he smiled, too.

"I gotcha," he relented. "I'll try not to be."

"Good," Felix said.

There was a quiet moment. Nothing strange — just another natural lapse in anything to say, and for that moment, Sylvain propped his chin on his hand and watched Felix. Felix smirked at him; an unspoken _what?_ Sylvain grinned. Neither said a word.

Sylvain decided that he was happy.

Sylvain glanced at Ingrid. She was still fast asleep, though at some point she had rolled over, re-settling with the blanket pulled over her face. Sylvain glanced back at Felix and beckoned to him.

"Come here," he said.

Felix finished his wine. Sylvain beckoned, a little more impatiently, and Felix took his sweet time getting up. He was very nearly in arm's reach, and the moment he came closer, Sylvain leaned over and he got a hand on the back of Felix's thigh and pulled him in. Felix moved with it, but he braced himself against the back of Sylvain's chair to avoid being pulled right into his lap. Sylvain liked that push and pull, he _liked_ figuring that out.

"I'm not going to sit on your lap in front of Ingrid, sleeping or not, if that's what you're after," Felix said, faintly amused.

_Fine. _Sylvain chuckled under his breath.

"But are we sleeping together tonight?" He ran his hand up higher on the back of Felix's thigh. "Both literally, and…"

He grinned. Though Felix maintained that stalwart expression, an involuntary flush spread to his cheeks.

"We'll see where things go," he said. "But yes, I'm staying in your room."

"Alright," Sylvain said, pleased. He palmed the back of Felix's thigh still, letting his hand slide to the tops of Felix's boots and then right back up again, around the side, to the front. He traced the seam on the front of Felix's pants all the way to his belt-line, as innocently as he could — but who was he kidding? Felix knew. He promised: "No pressure, though."

"Ha," Felix replied, and he bent to kiss the crown of Sylvain's head. Sylvain beamed. "Are you saying it's time to go upstairs?"

"If you don't wanna stay up with sleeping beauty over here," Sylvain said, gesturing at Ingrid with a nod of his head. "Sure."

"We can always talk there," Felix said. He went to Ingrid and nudged her in the shin with his foot. "Ingrid. Go to bed."

Ingrid barely stirred, just grumbling something and rolling over. Felix nudged her harder, and still nothing.

"Ingrid."

"Just leave her, she's not gonna freeze," Sylvain said. Felix leaned over her like he was planning an angle of attack. Sylvain bit back a guffaw. "Dude, don't do that. Last time—"

Felix did do that. He leaned in and pinched Ingrid's nose, the Faerghus classic. That got her moving, eyes snapping open and an arm swinging to defend herself, and Felix was not fast enough to move away — he got smacked upside the head, and Sylvain burst out laughing.

Ingrid sent them off to bed as though they had not made that decision before Felix's rude wake-up call, and so off they went. The population of the castle had long since gone to bed, and what torches still burned were low, their rationed oil at its very end. Both of them didn't need the light to move around, their familiarity guiding them through the dark, the faintest orange light catching off the crags in the stones.

Felix was in a particular mood, too. The moment they got into the winding stairwell, he tugged Sylvain into an alcove. Sylvain could not recall the last time anyone had done that, and it sent a tingle down his spine. He could not have gone more eagerly, and he quickly took Felix by the hips and turned him around so he was the one pressed into the brick.

“I thought you wanted to get to bed,” Sylvain rumbled, low on his breath. Felix rolled his eyes, just a flash of the whites of his eyes in the dark, and if he intended to go anywhere, now Sylvain wasn’t going to let him. Not leaning a thigh between his legs, that was for sure.

“We’ll get there,” Felix muttered, taking Sylvain’s face between his hands and kissing him. Sylvain could have grinned if his mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied. He wanted it to go on forever; he thought Felix might have to concede to some public displays of affection, or else he’d never keep his hands to himself at all in private.

And oh, the feeling of pressing another body up against the stone wall, Felix’s lean hips and his firm chest barely yielding no matter how close he insinuated himself — delightful. Felix’s fingers sliding back into his hair, doubly so.

“Now who’s a kid, huh?” Sylvain muttered back. “Necking in dark corridors, can’t even make it up a staircase—"

Felix bit him. Not hard at all, just a little graze of the teeth on his lower lip to make a point. It intrigued Sylvain about as much as it startled him, and a great laugh bubbled from him, bouncing down the solemn halls: “Did you just bite me?”

Felix had no response to that beyond smirking and squirming a little against Sylvain's thigh.

It occurred to him that Felix had probably seen him like this with a girl at least a dozen times at Garreg Mach alone. Rounded a corner and found him with a hand up a girl's skirt, or come into an otherwise-empty classroom to find Sylvain hastily rebuttoning his fly, his embarrassed girlfriend's back to the door. All the times Felix had knocked and gone unanswered, or listened to the sounds drift in through his open bedroom windows. And the years in Fhirdiad during the war, he hadn't been much better.

But for all of that, Sylvain had never seen Felix with anyone. He bit his own lower lip, gently, feeling the sore spot where he'd been nipped.

"Do you always bite?" Sylvain asked, intrigued.

Both of them paused when they heard footsteps; judging by the sound, knights. Sylvain immediately let Felix loose, instead lacing his fingers with Felix's and leading him back onto their path. Felix cast him a curious look — it wasn't like he wanted to get caught either, Sylvain knew that, but both of them might have expected Felix to be the one spooked by it.

"Sorry," he said. "They're a little more relaxed with me now than they were before, but they still report to her."

"Ingrid?"

"No," Sylvain said, and he threw Felix a pointed look.

"She still has it out for you, huh?” Felix remarked.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Sylvain replied. “The captain even tried to get me barred from the meetings in town — that didn’t work. Before the whole thing with Linhardt and curfew I think I could have just asked her what I did to her, but now she _really_ doesn't like me. It has something to do with…"

He paused.

"Alphonse," Felix suggested.

"Yeah," Sylvain replied, a little tightly. "I keep thinking… maybe she was one of the knights there in the room that day. She saw it happen."

“Maybe,” Felix remarked. There was a long pause between both of them, just their footsteps on the stairs. They had never talked about that day. Not even once. Sylvain felt a lump in his throat.

"I'm sorry about that," Sylvain said. "I should have gone with you. I should have."

"I forgave you a long time ago," Felix replied.

It didn't seem to Sylvain that it should be that easy. He didn't deserve easy, no matter how much he craved the break, and of all people, Felix had the right to feel betrayed. It would have been so easy for something to go wrong and for Felix to end up stuck there in Fhirdiad, all for insisting on one last attempt to get Sylvain to go, and Sylvain thought it was almost a miracle that they could have this moment at all: walking up the stairs, hand-in-hand, without animosity.

Sylvain swallowed his breath.

"I don't think it's worth apologizing to her."

Felix gave a small, contemplative hum.

"Probably not," he said. "But it might ease your conscience."

"Maybe," Sylvain said. He didn't think so. His conscience had nothing to do with her; he had never done anything personally to her other than be a little rude. Captain de Gouges was a ripple in his life, one of the many people who had felt, in some small way, his actions in the war. If he'd seen someone execute a tortured man without trial, he might have—

Sylvain felt a knot in his gut.

No, he knew exactly what kind of role he'd played in the war.

"I shouldn't have had that last glass," Sylvain said, even though he knew how much he was capable of pounding back. It really hadn't made a difference to anything but his mindset.

Felix squeezed his hand, and then let go to open Sylvain's bedroom door._ Their_ bedroom door, maybe. Sylvain was immediately distracted by the notion that they hadn't been in here together since that night where they'd fought.

"It was my fault, too," Felix said. "I only went to Fhirdiad because of you and Ingrid. I should have insisted we leave much earlier. Or…" He sighed. "Never gone at all."

"Yeah," Sylvain breathed out. "Yeah. That's probably true. But maybe it's good that didn't happen."

"Why?" Felix asked.

"Because then we wouldn't be here right now," Sylvain said. "Maybe… maybe we would have just won the war, and we'd be happy with that. I wouldn't be too fucked up to lead Gautier, so I'd be there, and you'd be wherever, and we'd never have another reason to live so close together again."

Felix nodded.

"That's probably true," he said. "I'm sure we would have stayed friends, but…"

"We wouldn't be together," Sylvain agreed.

Felix smiled suddenly, but he said nothing. Sylvain nudged him, and then nudged him harder when he didn't get a response. Felix just shook his head, pressed a hard kiss to his knuckles, and then set about stripping off his jacket. Sylvain realized he'd left his jacket behind, but there wasn't a chance he wanted to step away from Felix right now. He watched Felix move onto his boots right after, and he felt like a dog realizing it was dinnertime.

"Fair warning," Sylvain said, watching Felix bent over. "I have not been with anyone for like… months." He was surprised that he'd actually lost count of the days.

"That's fine. I've been with a couple men before, but none since you and I met up in Remire," Felix said.

Sylvain was surprised by that; who the fuck would he sleep around with in or around Remire? But then again, it felt foolish to be surprised by something so inherently self-centred. Of course Felix had a life outside of him. Felix's life hadn't ground to a halt without him around. Both of their lives had kept moving — and now it was strange to think that they might be able to move together.

Sylvain looked away for a second.

"Maybe a little pressure, then," he joked. He started to undress, too. He figured he wasn't going to wait around for Felix to do it for him, and Felix was going to take forever with those ridiculous thigh-high boots, anyway. He was much quicker about it overall, stripping down right to his braies.

(Maybe that's why it took Felix so long with his boots — he kept slowing up to see what Sylvain was doing.)

"Take your time," Sylvain teased, and he sprawled out in bed, completely sure that his loose braies did very little to hide, well, anything. Felix took a long look, the corner of his mouth curled in obvious pleasure, and Sylvain felt his ego inflate drastically. Burst, actually. He was immediately hard.

Felix tossed a boot across the room, to the foot of the bed, and then the other followed shortly after. He was still largely dressed, but Sylvain beckoned him anyway.

"C'mere," he said.

Felix did just that, creeping barefoot across the cool floors, and Sylvain sat up to meet him. Once more, he took Felix by the backs of his thighs, one in each hand, and Felix slid right into Sylvain's lap, knees on either side of the bed. He let out a long breath that Sylvain felt viscerally, the unusualness of this shared, the moment far too awake. Sylvain's hands spanned up Felix's ass and then roved right down the fronts of his thighs.

"You're nervous," Felix said. It sounded a little bit like an accusation, but it was a nice one.

Sylvain chuckled, and he leant his forehead against Felix's chest and nodded. Felix scoffed, a hand going to the back of Sylvain's head and holding him there. Sylvain found his nose alongside Felix's sternum; he could feel the steady thump-thump of his heart. That rhythm was tell-tale. For all his posturing, Felix was nervous too.

"Well," Sylvain muttered, against Felix's shirt, and then he chose to lift his head. He looked up at Felix's very serious expression and felt himself melting into the bed. "You're the first person in a long, long time that I want to impress."

Felix exhaled, long and slow, and he pulled Sylvain's head back against his chest. Sylvain let him, bringing his arms around his waist, and then, before he even realized it was coming, Sylvain was crying.

The following morning, Felix rose early. Maybe he thought he could get out of bed and sneak off to train, as he was in the habit of doing, but he didn't even get one foot on the floor before Sylvain felt his intentions and snaked an arm around his waist and yanked him back under the covers. Felix put up an obligatory struggle at first, protesting Sylvain's name and prying at his arm, but maybe his attempted departure was mere token, some sort of tradition — he settled just as quickly, half-pinned under one of Sylvain's thighs, a big arm still firmly clamped around his middle.

"No," Sylvain murmured in his ear. He closed his eyes again and grinned into the back of Felix's head. "I'm not done sleeping yet."

"I was just going to see what time it was," Felix said, gesturing with his only free hand towards the window.

"If Ingrid isn't banging down the door telling us to get our butts into the dungeon, we've still got time," Sylvain replied. "And I've been up at dawn every day for weeks."

Felix sighed and patted his arm. _Alright_. So they laid there, both of them quiet. Sylvain nuzzled into Felix as if they could possibly get closer, pressing some lazy kiss to the crook of Felix's neck. The sun, not yet fully risen in the sky and bleeding a great orange stripe into their room, promised a busy day ahead of them. Sylvain knew he wouldn't fall asleep again, but he pretended like he might. Maybe Felix was the same, dragging a lazy hand back and forth along Sylvain's forearm. It was nice. It hardly seemed real.

It was real.

"Fe," Sylvain muttered.

"Hm?"

"If I get involved with Gautier again…" he said, and he trailed. He trailed long enough for Felix to pry him off, but only to roll over to face him. Sylvain was momentary distracted by how close they were, and how Felix's eyes looked in the light of dawn. Was he some idiot romantic? No. He swallowed his breath. "Is that a deal-breaker for you, if I do?"

Felix searched his face.

"No," Felix said. "Whatever I choose to do, I think I can do it anywhere."

Sylvain smiled.

"Okay," he said. "Just… whatever I end up doing, I want to feel like I'm doing something useful. Something for other people."

Felix nodded. He brushed the tip of Sylvain's nose with his own in the process, and that tiny gesture was so maddeningly momentous that Sylvain sighed pleasantly.

There was a knock at the door. Felix rolled his eyes, and Sylvain felt tempted to just ignore them, but he knew who it was.

"Yeah," he called. "We're up."

"Are you decent?" Ingrid asked, voice muffled.

Sylvain groaned as he sat up. Felix did not move beyond dragging a pillow over his head. _Coward._

"Decent enough," Sylvain replied, figuring she wasn't going to go away.

Ingrid opened the door. Her eyes landed on them still in bed immediately and she heaved a dramatic sigh — precisely the kind of reaction Sylvain expected of her. Sylvain noted that the lacings on her shirt dipped low enough that could see a solid two inches of cleavage, and he felt very delighted for her, getting all cute all on her own.

Her gaze upon them was quite a bit less amused. They were both clearly undressed, and both still under the covers, and that was precisely the problem.

"You're _not _up," she said. "Get up. We have a lot to do today."

"We'll be down for breakfast," Sylvain promised. "Half an hour, tops."

"A quarter hour," Ingrid countered.

"Why?" Felix asked, muffled, and then he sat up, just barely. "The dungeon's not going anywhere. I think I might go train first."

She fixed them both with a deadpan look. Sylvain grinned._ Poor Ingrid, _he thought. About to get ganged up on a whole lot more. He'd have to take her side a little more often than usual just to keep Felix's attitude from running away from him.

"A quarter hour, dressed for exploring," Ingrid repeated with a firm gesture of her finger, but her voice was a little more amused than she probably wanted to let on. She left, closing the door behind her with a snap.

Felix sighed and moved to get up. Sylvain stopped him once more, this time taking him by the hips and hauling him into his lap. Felix did not go easy; he could not be thrown around like some skinny chambermaid or underfed village girl, and Sylvain nearly got knocked in the jaw for his trouble.

"We have to get dressed," Felix groused, but he sure didn't make an effort to leave.

Sylvain just grinned.

"Then you're not thinking of what we can do with a whole quarter hour."

Felix scoffed at him, but he sure didn't seem to care much about dressing after that, either.

Sylvain did not know, exactly, what one was supposed to wear for dungeon exploration. It seemed silly to him to wear armour, as there was almost certainly nothing alive down there beyond maybe a rat or two passing through some unpatched holes, but the thought that he might be crawling around in the wet and the debris did demand some sort of protection. He wore the under-padding from his suit of armour for that reason, which did make him wish he had more time to dress; by time he was all tied in, it had been half an hour, and Ingrid fixed him a truly unimpressed look from across the breakfast table.

"I was just going to wear my coat but I left it on the balcony last night," Sylvain told her. "So this is what I had."

"You didn't go get it?" she asked.

"Didn't have time," he repeated, which was largely his own fault, actually.

"Well, go get it now," Ingrid said. Sylvain groaned; didn't they have better things to do? Nobody was going to _steal_ it.

"Really?"

"Yes," Ingrid said, with a heavy sigh. "Who am I, your mother?"

"Definitely not," Sylvain hummed, and he smiled. "I'll get it."

She sighed again and smiled back.

Annette popped in right then, dressed in cute little breeches and a pair of booties that Sylvain knew, upon a single glance, were made for looks rather than any sort of practicality. She was overburdened with books, and Sylvain took them from her so she would not bungle them trying to sit down. She thanked him and practically sang her good mornings. Felix sighed, amused.

"You're late," he said, as if he were not late himself, thanks to Sylvain.

"Excuse you, I went by Linhardt's room first, carrying all these books, and then he still didn't answer the door!" Annette retorted. She looked around them, now that she wasn't surrounded by books. "I thought he was maybe already down here, but I guess not?"

Ingrid caught Sylvain's eye. Sylvain stood up.

"I'll get him and my jacket," he said.

He went for Linhardt first, but he did not answer his door for Sylvain, either, and Sylvain figured he was simply still asleep. However, no one stirred when he opened the door, and the bed was empty. It was unmade, but frankly, Sylvain did not think an unmade bed meant anything as far as Linhardt went. He doubted the bed was _ever_ made, given the generally disastrous state of the room. Sylvain used his foot to move Linhardt's discarded jacket from the floor to an already over-burdened chair. He had no idea how any one person owned enough to make such a mess, particularly when that person already had a study space.

The next stop then, was the library. Linhardt was not there, either, though his book bag was, and Sylvain shouldered it, as if carrying it around might draw Linhardt to him. Perhaps he had been en-route to the dining hall when Sylvain headed out, and they had missed each other in different halls? He turned around to head out and very nearly body-checked Linhardt to the floor.

"Whoa," Sylvain said, steadying the guy. Linhardt looked up at him with very wide eyes, and he was practically humming. "I didn't hear you there."

"I was just coming back from the rest room," Linhardt said, sounding more awake than Sylvain had ever heard before. He smiled, just a pleasant little curve to his mouth. _That's fucked up_, Sylvain thought.

"Buddy," he said. "Did you sleep last night?"

"No," Linhardt replied, breezing by. "I'm going straight to the dungeon to prepare. Tell them that."

That wasn't what they agreed on, but Sylvain did not think he was likely to convince Linhardt of otherwise, so he just nodded and offered the book-bag. Linhardt took it, and he turned on his heel and off he went. Sylvain followed a few steps.

"Lin?" he asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you know something about what we're going to see down there?" he asked. He thought of the crest of Gautier, imagined it looming in the darkness, towering over him. "Just… so I'm ready?"

Linhardt shrugged.

"Are you worried about finding something in particular? I was being honest with you when I said Edelgard merely wants me to find the crest research. She says it should be stored there, if it is still there at all."

"No, no," Sylvain said, feeling too stupid for the rest of that. "I just…" He didn't know what he was asking. "Why Gautier?"

Linhardt shrugged again.

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said.

Sylvain sighed.

"Alright, well, I'm going to grab my coat, and then I'll round up the rest of the troops."

Off Sylvain departed once more, tracing his steps back to the balcony where they'd caroused. The set-up as just as they'd left them, and Sylvain decided to do Ingrid a good turn and fold up the blankets and drag the chairs back to where they were supposed to be, safe inside from any rain the skies might spring on them. He didn't much feel like wearing his jacket, but when he draped it over his arm, he felt a funny resistance in the fabric, and he fished around until he found the problem.

It was Hubert's letter. Sylvain had forgotten about it, and he flipped it open, expecting some sort of book-keeping or notes on his payment for this whole affair.

It was not.

> _ I have concluded my research into the matter of your finances. I regret to inform you that your child's mother has passed away._

Sylvain read it twice over and then folded up the letter as though hiding it might deny him that very knowledge. But it was too late; he knew, and he could not go back to a time where he did not know. He flipped it open again, just to be sure that he'd read it correctly.

> _ I am told the girl is well and safe with a local innkeeper, but your remaining funds may have been misappropriated in the process. I will assist you in correcting these arrangements upon my arrival in Fhirdiad this coming month._

And then, just above Hubert's signature:

> _ Remain calm._

Sylvain folded it once more, worrying that thick paper crease between his fingers, and he mulled it over for a moment. His mind felt remarkably easy. It was the sort of thing he didn't need to think about, much less overthink; the response seemed so obvious that he even began to consider that everyone downstairs was waiting on him, and that they'd be cross with him if he held up the show any longer.

He pocketed the letter again and pulled on his coat. It would be good for keeping out the chills that awaited him below.


	40. Choice

After a quick breakfast, the lot of them headed downstairs to join Linhardt, where he sat doing nothing at all, simply waiting for them. No one pondered aloud why he might want to sit there instead of in the company of others — it seemed obvious that he was simply excited to get at whatever was inside. The five of them set upon arranging more of Annette's water-moving sigils and assisting her with that, and by time they finished draining out the rest of the water, it was well after lunchtime. Ingrid suggested they take a break before continuing, but she got a resounding "no!" in return: their collective curiosity had become intolerable.

"We still need a plan of attack," Ingrid said, gathering them all together. "We know the dungeon runs about half the width of the castle and all the way to the back — about twenty thousand square feet. Enough space for everyone in the castle to hide, if need be."

("Tell me something I don't know," Felix remarked, and he got a shush-ing from Annette for his trouble.)

"We don't know how much of it is collapsed, though," Sylvain said. "Were you thinking we should split up?"

"Maybe," Ingrid said. "A lot of that is cells and store rooms; it won't take long to sweep them, since there's only one entrance and exit. Whatever we're looking for is probably secret, so pay close attention."

"And the crest of Gautier," Sylvain said, soberly.

"And the crest of Gautier," Ingrid repeated. "So keep an eye out for that."

There was a solemn nod amongst them all.

"Linhardt, what are you looking for, exactly?"

"Crest research," he replied. "I'll know it when I see it."

Felix scoffed.

"The amount of water that was down here," he remarked. "You really think paper would survive down here that long?"

"We have to try," Ingrid said, sternly.

"I'm not saying we won't," Felix said. "Just that we need to be realistic about _what_ we'll find, if anything. There isn't going to be some stuffed bear with Edelgard embroidered across its head."

"Why would it be embroidered across its head?" Annette asked.

"You know what I mean," Felix replied, curtly.

"Again, we'll just have to try our best," Ingrid repeated once more.

The lot of them ventured out off the stairs and across the dungeon. Though the water was gone, some puddles still remained, and a persistent drip carried on somewhere in the distance. Their boots were quiet on the wet stone floor, so quiet that the sound of Sylvain's torch burning was almost distracting. Linhardt, once more, was fearless — he wandered ahead of them in the dark, rounding corners and ducking into rooms far faster than Sylvain liked. Sylvain decided he was going to lock Linhardt down there if he didn't stick with them.

"Lin," Sylvain called, and he was surprised to hear himself so quiet. "Slow the fuck down."

Annette giggled nervously from behind him. Sylvain glanced back at her with a smile that felt more like reflex than anything.

"It's so eerie down here," Ingrid murmured. Sylvain found her looking somewhat nervous, but she moved like she wasn't.

He might have thought Felix to be the only person other than Linhardt to be wandering around this place fearlessly, but Felix's stony expression was belied by the fact that he was walking around with one hand on the hilt of his sword. All of them jumped when somewhere up ahead, a door creaked; Felix drew his sword immediately.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Sylvain demanded of Felix. “Put that away. You’re giving me the creeps.”

“Just in case,” Felix said, and he tried to sound casual, but Sylvain didn’t buy it. “We don’t know what’s down here.”

“Other than maybe rats, there's nothing _alive_,” Ingrid said, sidling up alongside Sylvain.

“What about ghosts?” Annette suggested, clearly to be funny.

“Ghosts!" Sylvain repeated. "Good thing you have a sword, then, Felix! Honestly.”

He could not see Felix's face in that moment, but he could tell that eyes were being rolled.

Sylvain decided to just split off from the others; they would have to eventually, with so many places to check, and the attempts at levity were sharpening the edge he was teetering on rather than dulling it. He picked a direction and strode off in it, finding himself in a long row of cells. Most of them were closed; when he tried them they did not open, either because they were locked or because they were rusted shut, and there was nothing of import in the open ones. Just old manacles dangling from the walls, and beds with soggy mattresses that sank into the bed ropes like they were melting, smelling as rank as a long-soured stable. Sylvain held his breath and wandered on through them, using a foot to shove them aside in case anything was underneath. Nothing.

He heard a sound overhead and turned sharply, raising the torch. It was just a wet rat scampering across a beam, mere inches from the ceiling. He exhaled, long and slow.

"Sylvain?" Ingrid called, from deep inside.

"Yeah," he called back, continuing to make his way deeper. "I'm okay."

"Okay," she called back.

Sylvain found one of the cave-in points shortly after that, a mess of stone rubble on the floor that had not quite been braced enough. In a last effort to save the ceiling, someone had installed great beams of timber, and for many years that had likely saved the floor above, but after all the years of flooding the wood was rotting away. Sylvain picked at it with a finger and wood chunks fell apart like fibre, and he wiped himself off on the leg of his pants with a little scoff. Just as well they were down there — new timbers would need to be installed eventually.

"The oubliette is still flooded," Felix called from somewhere deeper. Sylvain didn't bother replying, figuring he wouldn't be heard.

More rats above. Sylvain followed them with his eyes briefly to see where they were going; through a hole in a beam and to another side, which was likely another part of the dungeon. He'd found nothing, so he doubled back.

He could hear Ingrid and Annette talking — laughing about something nervously. He spotted them as he rounded a corner and kept going, trying to figure out where the entrance to where the rats had gone. He passed through some sort of general holding room, which was a very broad room with a ring of stone posts, each fitted with rings. A couple dozen prisoners could have been held in there at once, and Sylvain was very cautiously reminded of Dimitri's early bids to Rhea to reopen the dungeon, in hopes of staying her executions. Not that they'd even been successful, but Dimitri had given up on that idea within the first year. Looking at those miserable posts, too short to the ground for a grown man to even stand comfortably, he thought that death might have been preferable, anyway.

Quite sad, too, given the ornate rooms that had stood above this dungeon. Sylvain imagined being held in such a dark, miserable place for so long, just to have trial under a gilded ceiling. Not a single coin to be spared for a prisoner's comfort; nothing down here surprised him, but that didn't change his disgust, either.

To think he'd ever lived in that Fhirdiad.

He caught up with the rats (or some rats, at least) up a short staircase from the holding room, where he found a dead end. That small room was empty, no doubt stripped of anything useful before being sealed up. Undoubtedly no one had wanted to use the beds from the cells, he supposed.

"Sylvain," Felix said.

Sylvain jumped; Felix was right at the door, much closer than he expected. Sylvain exhaled hard.

"Are you alright?" Felix asked.

_Surprisingly, yes, _Sylvain thought to say. It occurred to him that he was alone with Felix, and the desire to talk to him involuntary bubbled up in his throat, but he wanted to wait.

"Anything interesting?" Sylvain asked.

"We found the crest you were looking for," Felix said. He beckoned for Sylvain to follow.

"Huh," Sylvain said.

He followed Felix back through the winding darkness, watching Felix's torch sway and flicker as they walked. As they drew closer, the muffled conversation between the girls and Linhardt sounded clearer; they sounded excited.

"Where is it?"

"Ingrid and I found it under a plank of wood," Felix said. "It's a slab in the floor."

"With the Crest on it?" Sylvain asked. He doubled his pace, and Felix had to pick it up, too, just to lead the way.

They almost made a couple wrong turns in their hurry, with all the walls so indistinct in the dark, but Sylvain slipped into the right room just in time to hear Annette said, curiously: "Like a warp floor?"

Before Felix had said it, Sylvain hadn't considered that. The idea scared him a little. His friends moved out of his way when he moved so purposefully towards it that he intended to push anyone in his path, and he looked down at it. It was a round disc large enough for one person to stand on. Perhaps two, if they held close. The crest of Gautier was emblazoned on it, but the crest itself was changed. The spikes around its centre now made a terrible eye, the prongs like great lashes. It glowed a sickly orange, though very faintly. Sylvain imagined if they all smothered their torches, it would be bright enough to see in the dark.

"Not like a warp floor," he said, slowly. "It _is _a warp floor."

"What's a warp floor?" Ingrid asked, very tentatively.

“It’s a portal,” Sylvain muttered. “I've seen it before, under Garreg Mach… I… Uh… jeez, I guess you guys hadn't transferred yet. Linhardt?”

"Are you too lazy to explain it?" Linhardt asked, a little surprised, which prompted Sylvain to roll his eyes. Linhardt loved that sort of arcane shit -- and Sylvain wanted to process for a second. Linhardt carried on: "When Flayn went missing at Jeritza's hands, the secret room under Garreg Mach had a number of these. If you step on them, they take you somewhere else."

"Somewhere else?" Felix said skeptically. "Why didn't we know about this?"

"It was a big deal," Sylvain said. "Those of us who went down there got taken into Rhea's office and sworn not to speak about it. I'd almost forgotten about that. It didn't even occur to me that…"

He trailed off. He didn't know what else to say about it.

"Why Gautier?" Felix asked, quietly.

"I don't know," Sylvain said. "I… really don't know. I'm pretty sure everyone who does know is dead."

But he was relieved, at least, to know it was nothing personal.

"Okay," Ingrid said. "I think it's safe to say Edelgard knows about this, and possibly knows… where it goes." She seemed to be very careful about her words — as if doubting that it would spirit them away anywhere at all. "Should we go upstairs?"

"And do what?" Sylvain asked.

Ingrid pursed her lips.

"Wait for Edelgard," she said.

Sylvain hesitated. Every part of him told him to take the offer. Leave this place, leave this _fucking_ place, this place that felt like a culmination of the one thing he'd spent his entire life resigned to: feeling trapped. In the world above, he had his friends, and some vague sense of purpose in his day, and a new relationship to tend to, and his _child_. He had a solid foundation on which to build his future.

What did he need from Edelgard's past?

Sylvain felt everyone's eyes on him, but he shook his head hard.

"No," he said.

"Why not?" Ingrid asked, startled.

"Sylvain," Felix said, tersely. "We don't know what this is, beyond one of Edelgard's famous leaps of faith. She's currently making her way here from across Fódlan. Whatever's down there can wait."

"It's waited fifteen years, at least," Ingrid remarked.

"No," Sylvain repeated. "I'm tired of waiting for answers. This has my crest on it, and I've been running from that for years, so…"

He trailed; not because he meant to, but because he felt something seize in his throat. He swallowed it, and he nodded with determination. He had to do this. He had to.

"I'll see what's on the other side and come back."

"No," Ingrid said. "We don't know what's on the other side, or where — this is not what any of us expected to find, Sylvain. We should talk about this."

"What's there to talk about?" Sylvain asked. "Genuine question. What is there to decide but yes or no? It's a warp floor. It goes to a hidden part of this dungeon. That's how it works."

Linhardt sighed and pushed by them. Sylvain opened his mouth to call him off, but the words didn't come out; as Linhardt stepped onto the tile, it burned orange under his feet. In that light, Sylvain and Linhardt locked eyes for the briefest of seconds, and then he was gone in a great column of light, brilliant purple. Annette yelped.

Sylvain's heart stopped beating for an instant.

"If you ever compare me to him again, I'm going to kick your ass," Felix said, darkly.

"Well, now we're going," Sylvain said, pointedly. "Otherwise he's on his own."

"Okay," Ingrid said, her voice a little stronger. Maybe it was real to her then; Sylvain didn't know. Everything felt very real to him now. He looked down at the floor, where the modified crest of Gautier pulsed orange and yellow. Her hand wound into the back of his shirt like he might step forward without another word. "Someone has to stay here, just in case. Felix? Annette?"

"I'll stay," Annette said. She sounded nervous, _real_ nervous, the kind of nervous that Sylvain felt vibrating on everyone else.

"I'll go first, then," Felix said. He glanced back at Sylvain. There was some sort of understanding there, even if none of them knew what was going on. Sylvain nodded, and then he was gone too, vanishing in a burst of light.

Sylvain _felt _Ingrid breathe in deeply.

"I'll go next," he told her. "If it freaks you out, stay here."

Ingrid shook her head.

"I'm coming with you," she said, firmly. "I'll be right behind you."

Sylvain nodded and stepped forward.

It was very quiet on the other end. His torch had not survived the journey, and it smoked in his hand. It almost didn't matter. He didn't need it to see.

But he did not know _what_ he was seeing.

Sylvain blinked, over and over again. Even when his vision settled, his eyes hurt. There was some sort of light overhead that was as bright as the sun, though it was no sun nor flame that he had ever seen: it was concentrated into thick bars mounted into the ceiling. Was it like the sigils, the glyphs of light that would flash around mages, but in a long, continuous bar? He struggled to look at it just to comprehend what it was — some sort of magic, no doubt, but nothing like Sylvain had ever seen before. He raised a hand to block most of it, but still, what little he gazed at hurt his eyes, and yet he couldn't tear his eyes away.

“Sylvain?” Felix called, somewhere ahead of him, and Sylvain finally gave up and turned his eyes to the floor. He saw those bars every time he blinked, as if they had been burned into the inside of his eyelids. He gasped and tried to shake it off. The floor was not much better. It glowed too, but much duller. Sylvain moved forward with a hand out, feeling his way through the space.

Ingrid appeared behind them in a whorl of light. Sylvain jolted in alarm but he settled when he heard her gasp.

"Don't look up," Sylvain said, curtly, raising a hand to shield her eyes. She brought her hands up, too, and she stumbled off the tile. Sylvain had half a mind to just send her back through it.

“What _is_ this?” she asked.

“No idea. Wait, where’s Linhardt?” Sylvain asked, worried. “Lin?”

“Down here,” Linhardt called. Sylvain followed the voice, surprised to find that the light didn’t impede his ability to see in the dark once he actually _looked_ — there was something different about the blue lights, and he squinted, keeping a hand overhead so they wouldn't distract him.

“Stay close, buddy,” Sylvain called after him. Linhardt was walking away. Sylvain followed, passing Felix. He couldn't stop looking around him; the walls were covered in great metal veins. Linhardt kept walking, moving like he was looking for something. Sylvain called: “Lin — we don’t know what’s down here, it’s dangerous.”

“It’s probably not, now that we're in here,” Linhardt called back. "It looks quite abandoned."

He vanished around a corner and Sylvain jogged after him, heart pounding. He heard Linhardt make a pleased sound — by time Sylvain caught up, Linhardt was standing in front of a table with a great slanted glass top.

“What, uh — have you been here before?”

"No," Linhardt said. "But Edelgard explained it so vividly…"

A chill ran down his spine. What was this? He looked around them again. The blue lights didn't seem so jarring after a moment, but he couldn't see enough around him to make sense of any of it. Nothing looked like anything he had ever seen before. The walls looked like metal, with interlocking lines that didn't match any brickwork Sylvain had ever seen.

Linhardt examined the glass panel, running his fingers along it. It was caked in dust, and Linhardt wiped it off with his sleeve.

"What is that?"

“Hubert said to activate it,” Linhardt replied. He sounded excited, and Sylvain wasn't sure if that was reassuring or not. _Activate it?_

“Activate what?” Sylvain joined him and stared at the glass too, but he couldn’t see any switch. Linhardt looked at it as though he could see something Sylvain couldn’t.

“This has been under Fhirdiad all this time?” Ingrid asked. She kept looking around, too, and she joined them at the glass. Sylvain put an arm out for her, and she took it, tucking herself into his side. He felt a little better at that, but then was surprised to find her running a hand up and down his back, as if _he_ needed comfort. Well, fine. He'd take it.

“Not quite. We’re somewhere else entirely, perhaps thousands of miles away. But I was told _this_,” Linhardt said, tapping the panel, “controls this room.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Sylvain said. He glanced behind them and called: "Felix?"

"Here," he called, very curtly. He was all the way up ahead, walking with his sword raised, and the blue light glinted off the steel blade.

"I'll go scout with him," Ingrid said. Before Sylvain could argue the benefits of staying together, Ingrid slipped away from him, jogging in Felix's direction. He swallowed his breath.

"Don't worry," Linhardt said, amused. "I don't think we're meant to understand any of this."

"That may be, but you seem to understand a great deal more than I do," Sylvain said. He turned, leaning against the desk, and he let a hand run across its edge, and then span over its surface. He had never touched a piece of metal so broad, let alone so smooth. It was polished like jewelry.

Linhardt smiled.

"I don't really know what I'm doing," he said. "But Edelgard's letter arrived a few days ago, just in time… I can't imagine what I might have thought, coming in here without warning."

"Probably like I do," Sylvain said, dryly.

Linhardt giggled. It was about the strangest thing Sylvain had heard that day, even standing in… whatever this was. He followed the edge of the table. There wasn't a great deal of furniture in the place, much like the dungeons they'd just come from, but somehow it felt deliberate.

Something happened on the glass. It illuminated with yet more blue light, moving across the screen in straight lines, like some sort of supernatural ink to the page. Circles blossomed on the ends of the lines, and the lines branched off in different directions, jutting like the grooves in the walls, on the floor. Letters flickered into existence, or at least what Sylvain thought were letters — they lined up just like them, making words he couldn't understand.

"So what is this?" he asked, dubiously.

"It's a laboratory," Linhardt said.

Sylvain had never heard that word in his life. He didn't even know what _it_ was. The glass? The room? The entire complex?

"It is a room where scientific experiments are done," Linhardt explained. "Like an alchemist's or a physician's study, or an inventor's workshop, but for scientific discoveries."

"So?" Sylvain replied, carefully. "I thought we were looking for a prison cell. Where Edelgard was kept. But you're trying to…"

And then Sylvain felt his heart leap into his throat. Linhardt looked at him, no doubt waiting for him to finish his sentence, but Sylvain couldn't get it out. He felt a thrumming in his chest, and for a moment, he thought it was his crest.

"This is real," he said, almost like he had to convince himself of something that he already felt. "This is real. We found this place, and you're actually figuring out how to remove crests… how to get rid of them."

She had known for a long time, then, hadn't she? Sylvain felt his heart hammering.

His heart hurt. His _head_ hurt. Sylvain moved to a wall, and his hand dragged over the too-smooth contours of it. His back hit it next. He called Ingrid and Felix's names and got a response back, but they sounded far away. He looked down at his hands and find them vibrating.

"Linhardt," he said, "Is this it? Is this —"

"I think you need to sit down," Linhardt informed him.

Sylvain did just that, sliding until his ass hit the floor. The place was so quiet that the sound of his own body hitting the ground felt ear-shattering. His heart felt prepared to burst right out of his chest. Ingrid and Felix came back into his field of vision, and both of them looked at him like he'd suffered some injury.

He had, probably.

But he was just so relieved.

"Sylvain," Ingrid said, dropping to her knees at his side. Felix stood over him, his brows furrowed. Ingrid touched his face. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said.

Ingrid gave him a hesitant look, and Sylvain watched some wordless argument rapidly pass over his head. Felix shook his head.

"Let's get out of this place," Felix said, finally. "I don't think we're meant to be here."

When he surfaced on the other end, Annette was waiting, anxious already. Sylvain squeezed her shoulder as he passed her, eager to get back upstairs. He was down his torch, though, and he had cast his aside somewhere. He didn't even remember when.

"What is it?" Annette asked, alarmed.

"It's a lab," Sylvain said, like he understood what that meant.

Annette looked confused, but she left it at that. He wondered if he looked as shocked as they did. Felix came through the warp floor just a second later, nearly blinding him in the process, and then Ingrid right behind him. Neither didn't seem too bothered by what they'd found; on edge, maybe, but not bothered.

"Sylvain," Ingrid said, concerned. "Let's get you upstairs."

"I'm fine," he repeated. He kept moving, even into the dark, finding a part of the wall and leaning against it. He felt like he'd run a marathon. His hands were still shaking. The cold, damp wall was almost a comfort — something he never thought he'd think in his life. He was happy, though. He was certain of that.

"Annette, are you okay waiting here?" Ingrid asked. "Linhardt is still inside. They won't have a torch to light their way back out if we all go."

"That's okay," Annette said. "I'm happy to help. You need a re-light though, right?"

"Yeah…"

Sylvain waited while Ingrid and Annette figured out their torch situation, and then Ingrid promptly caught up with him, slipping her free arm around his waist. Felix found his other side. Together they moved through the dungeon, backtracking here or there until they got back to the stairs, and Ingrid and Felix marched him up them when he was sure his knees were ready to fail.

At the top, the relative light of the castle made his eyes hurt. Sylvain let the two of them take him all the way to the nearest parlour, where Ingrid guided him right to a chair and sat him down.

"I'm fine," he told them once more, which felt a little more true, off his feet.

"Just breathe," Ingrid told him. She put a hand to his forehead, and then his cheek.

"Stop mothering him," Felix said. "He said he's fine."

Ingrid shot Felix a look. Sylvain raised his hands in defence.

"Don't argue! Listen to me. This is why she didn't want to ask me," he said. "Not because of the crest of Gautier, but because of that place. It's _for_ crests."

Ingrid paused, and then she slowly sank down to sit next to him. Sylvain nodded at her, waiting for a response, and then she said: "Sylvain, I'm sure she didn't meant to upset you."

"No," he said, firmly. "I'm thrilled. I've never been _more _thrilled."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I've spent years running from all this because I didn't think she could do it," he said. "I didn't think she could make a world without crests, that things would change and stay that way. Do you get that?"

"Of course," Felix said, and he leaned against the armrest of Sylvain's chair. The whole thing creaked, but it did not give. "And you now think she can?"

"Well, that's just it, right?" Sylvain said. "Maybe she can."

Felix mulled that over for a moment. It took Ingrid some time, too. Sylvain itched to explain it to them, but he thought he might come across as a little crazy. A little maddened. And he'd spent his whole life trying to be relaxed, hadn't he? To be seen as anything but that felt frightening, but…

"Listen… I think I can do this, now," he said. "I've been thinking about it for the past little while, but if crests really didn't matter, I could just… go on with my life. I could have a normal life."

"We don't know what that place is," Ingrid said, a little too gently. "Just what Linhardt _thinks_ it can do."

He thought to argue. He thought to push her off. She didn't get it.

"That's my point," he said. "All this time I've been acting like if things were different, I could make something of my life. Even just yesterday, I was thinking — the only thing stopping me from going home is that crest, that family name."

There was a long pause between them, and Felix and Ingrid shared a dubious look. Sylvain knew that they were thinking; both of them had left home, too, and they'd made their lives elsewhere. They didn't actually _have_ to go back to Fraldarius or Galatea, and their lands had not suffered for it. Why would they? One child was not the lynchpin of an entire land, no matter how badly Sylvain's upbringing insisted upon it.

But how long had he been running from it, insisting that he was one way when he was another? What had all his talk been about? Being an asshole, being a bad person, not wanting to see his friends, not wanting to be involved in politics, or with Fhirdiad, or with Gautier…

If he'd been so serious about avoiding all this, why had he gone to any of the trouble?

Because he owed it to a kid, a kid he hadn't seen since she was small enough to fit in the crook of his arm? A child he'd never actually held in his arms, because he'd been so resistant to the future other people had planned for him?

But what if––

"I_ do_ care about Gautier," he said, and he let out a long breath. "I want to go. Talk isn't good enough anymore."

"So you'll go," Felix said, cautiously. He leant a little harder against the armrest. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I _have_ to go," Sylvain repeated. "I have to go. As soon as I can."

"Why?" Ingrid asked, and she stood a little in front of him, like she was afraid he'd get up at that moment. Her hands fluttered over him, as if she might caress him into some peace, but Ingrid couldn't be calming if her life depended on it — she sensed he was choking on something just as surely as Felix did.

"My… my kid's there," he said.

He watched Ingrid's face fall. Her hands certainly dropped, and for a moment, Sylvain let that silence linger. It was no surprise to Felix, of course, but the subject also hadn't come up since. He might as well have hit Ingrid in the gut with it, though.

"You have a child?" Ingrid asked, her voice a whisper.

He nodded.

Ingrid looked like she was on the cusp of deflating. She walked way from him, a certain tension in her shoulders, and Sylvain felt terror and relief in equal measure. Ingrid lingered just on the other side of the room for a moment, and then, from that safe distance, she asked: "Since when?"

"Uh," he said. "Four years ago, or so. She was born in summer. Her mom… ah, her mother's dead pretty recently. Only found out this morning."

"How?" Ingrid asked, and then she pursed her lips together. "Hubert's letter. He knew?"

"Not because I told him," Sylvain said. "Everyone who knows otherwise is here in this room."

Ingrid glanced at Felix, who held her gaze stonily. Sylvain could tell he was itching to say something, and that Ingrid might have loved to tear into him in return for his secrecy, but neither said anything. Sylvain wasn't sure if he should be grateful to it or mourn the relief it might have given him for normalcy, in that moment.

Ingrid put a hand over her mouth, scraped together the dregs of her patience, and she nodded.

"That's where the money's been going," she said.

Sylvain nodded, too.

"Okay," she breathed. She stood up a little straighter."Where is the kid now? Is she okay?"

"Hubert says she's with an innkeeper," Sylvain said. "I don't know much."

"And what are you going to do about that?" Felix asked.

The question might have felt a little less probing from Ingrid, or at least probing in a different way. Sylvain wasn't sure how to answer. He hadn't processed any of this, not in the slightest. There hadn't been time to, and sitting in that armchair, Felix at his side and Ingrid pacing around, he wasn't sure what his brain would spit out under pressure.

"I've been trying to put my life back together for a while now," Sylvain said, very carefully. "This doesn't change that, it just makes it all little more clear, that's all."

That wasn't good enough for Felix. Sylvain knew that, right to his core, and he put a hand on Felix's knee and squeezed. Felix fixed him with a very reluctant look. Sylvain knew what the answer was. It was sure in his heart, and the responsibility of it settled on him like a suit of armour. He looked Felix in the eyes, and Felix did not look away. It seemed just his luck, he supposed. After all this, finally getting somewhere with Felix, someone he wanted to make it work with, and then this. He must have been cursed.

But he had to be a man about it, too.

“I have to go get her,” Sylvain said. “I have to take care of her, and Gautier. I have to make it right.”

“Okay,” Felix said. “When do we leave?”

Sylvain’s heart stopped.

_We._

Felix heaved a great sigh.

“You don’t seriously think...?” Felix trailed. “You're so fucking frustrating. I said I'd go to Gautier for you."

Sylvain let out an immense breath. Lacking any other option that wouldn't get him thrown off, he gripped Felix's knee like he might pop it, and he briefly leant the side of his head against Felix's ribs. Felix sighed, too, patting the side of his face, and Ingrid shook her head at both of them.

"Hey," Sylvain said, almost plaintive. "If our places were swapped, I'd have to think about it for a while…"

"I _do_ have to think about it," Felix said, and he let his hand settle on Sylvain's neck. It didn't feel like much, and yet from this person he was in love with, it might as well have been a cozy embrace. "But I came this far, didn't I? I'm not opposed to going. There are just some things we'll need to discuss."

"I think we have a lot to talk about tonight," Ingrid said, firmly. "But right now, we have to get the others from the dungeon."

"Yeah," Sylvain agreed. "Yeah…"

There was little in the way of carousing that night. There didn't need to be, in some sense. Felix took Annette home with assurances that he'd be back at the School in a couple days, and Linhardt settled into a long evening in the dungeon, fuelled by discovery and wonder alone. Sylvain might have gone back to his old friends, loathing and despair, sprawled in bed or in some similar state of misery, but he was ten steps out when Ingrid hauled him out for a long walk.

He didn't really want to go. It wasn't that his mind had changed at all — he felt more sure of his future than ever — but he supposed that nothing he'd ever gained in life had come without loss, and Ingrid's quiet acceptance of his last remaining secret was not comforting. He might have preferred being yelled at or getting his ass kicked, but he was equally sure that she hadn't found out anything that hadn't been a possibility since their youth. They'd all joked about Sylvain's trail of bastard children since he was what? Fourteen? Fifteen?

If Ingrid had been exasperated by that joke back then, then now she had every right to be livid.

They made their laps around the castle in careful silence for a while. It wasn't for a lack of things to say. There were plenty of things to say. Hundreds, if not thousands. It was the words themselves that failed him — Sylvain, a man who could string together a thousand variations of pretty flirtations off the top of his head, who could muse on ideology and nobility and the way of the world, utterly incapable of talking about himself.

He glanced at her sidelong here or there. She was no doubt willing to wait him out, and even if it rained, she'd keep him walking until he had it.

"Are you really serious about this?" she asked, finally.

Fair question. He could repeat it to himself over and over again, but like he'd said: words weren't enough. He had to do something about it.

"Yeah," he said. "I am."

"Why?" she asked.

"Why what?"

"Why…" She shook her head. "Just… why? It feels like you spent up until the tail end of the war insisting on being who you were raised to be, no matter how much you hated it… and ever since, it's been nothing but running."

He chewed on that.

"I'm almost surprised you didn't have the kid _during_ the war," Ingrid said. "I always thought… you know, that for all that 'studhorse' complex, you were really going to commit. You were going to marry, and have kids and be Margrave Gautier, and you'd be miserable, and then suddenly you wanted the exact opposite… and now you want to again?"

"That's a little far," he said. Explaining it felt like trying to wring water from dense wool. "I'm not saying I'm going to marry, or be a father, or be Margrave… just… I _always_ wanted it on my terms, Ingrid. I wanted to choose."

"I know," she said. "But…"

They were as far as the stables. Both of them glanced at it, and without need for conversation, they went in. Their old meet-up spot was there, temptingly close, and Sylvain thought he might like to sit in it again, as a man, as someone who was actually going to figure out his life this time, and not just pretend he was.

"If you asked me a while ago if I would give up my crest," Sylvain said, "I would have jumped for it. Absolutely. But now, I just think, it's part of me, isn't it? I wouldn't be here without it."

Ingrid shook her head.

"I still think you're panicking," she said. "But I get it. Part of it."

"Do you?" he asked. And quickly: "Not that I'm doubting you. It's strange to me too, but if I don't know what I'm going to do, how can anyone else?"

"I think so," she said.

They were at their stall. They were missing Felix, and Dimitri, for that matter, but one would be along eventually. The other, well, Dimitri was always going to be a part of them, wasn't he? They still felt the ripples of his life on their own shores every day, and Sylvain thought it would be that way a long time. Ingrid opened the door and let him go in first. There was no hay in it, but that was just fine. Sylvain sat down on the floor, right in the middle, and Ingrid sat down across from him, leant against the stall wall.

"So when the war ended, and I went back home to my parents and my siblings and Galatea," Ingrid said. "I was really optimistic. I'd just done so much during the war, so many big things. Edelgard couldn't dissolve dozens of houses as long as they agreed to work with her; she couldn't possibly rule otherwise. And my parents had to embrace me for who I'd become. I was a war hero! I'd made an attempt on Rhea's life long before her crimes were known in Faerghus. I'd led so many strategic battles! I was a knight, like I dreamed of being."

"But you still had to get married, and carry on the family line," Sylvain said.

"Right!" Ingrid sighed. "It was like going right back to before, but this time, we served an emperor instead of a king. I was stunned. All of that, and what was it for? To go back to engagement proposals, to start knitting baby clothes? Faerghus wasn't going to change overnight. And everyone who might have vouched for me had walked away… Dimitri couldn't tell my parents he wanted me in his service. Felix took off. You…"

Sylvain nodded tersely.

"Yeah," she said. "You told me to grow up. But I decided I had earned the right to make my own decisions about my duty to my kingdom, and that my parents were going to have to live with that."

"And I told you that you were being selfish," he said.

"You _did,_" she said. "In so many ways that it could have filled a whole book. And you talked about the girls your father was lining up for you, and how Gautier wasn't going to change just because of any Emperor, and how you'd just… have it all. I had never seen you so invested in what your father wanted for you and it threw everything into doubt for me. I'm still thrown. It was like what happened at Tailtean made _you _doubt everything. You've always been perceptive and sensitive, but I had never considered the ways you might _deliberately_ blind yourself."

All true. All true. Sylvain just nodded, looking away.

"And then suddenly your father died. He wasn't even sick or anything, just… one day he was gone, just like that, and the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards."

He looked down at the floor. The old stone was cracked and worn.

"I think you snapped," Ingrid said.

They both fell silent for a moment. Sylvain shifted on his bottom, and he couldn't look at her for a moment. He felt remarkably calm, though. It had been a long day, a long couple of days, actually, but he could think of worse ways to be. Worse conclusions to come to.

"You're not wrong," he said, finally. “My father was pretty good to me on the surface, but he weaponized my life. I had to be grateful for everything because even if Gautier was rich and powerful, I had to earn my right to be in my own fucking house, and I had it _good_ \- I was _allowed_ to earn it. Miklan wasn’t.” He shook his head. "And I thought, I failed at the only real rebellion I ever tried, so I went all in. I did everything I could to earn it, and I _still _couldn't enjoy it, so I just…"

He raked a hand through his hair.

"I drove Gautier into the ground. I made choices. Bad ones. I can own that now, I don't think it does me any good to deny it."

"That's just what I'm thinking," Ingrid said, and her voice grew very gentle, like he was more fragile than he was. "I don't think it's bad to go back to Gautier. I genuinely think it could be good for you to confront that. I'm just afraid that your first impulse is to just… _be_ that person again, instead of doing it the way you _are._"

"I don't want to," he said, gentle in turn. "And I won't. It's not all one or the other. I have debts to the people of Gautier, and the people of Gautier _didn't_ raise me — I shouldn't have ever taken that out on them. What my family did isn't an excuse for that."

There were footsteps coming up the aisle. The two of them froze, listening. There was no metal clank of a suit of armour, nor the hooves of horses, and they waited for the stable kid or some groomsman to pass them by and get back to their business in some other part of the stable, but the footsteps came closer. A dark glove appeared on the bars and swung the door open, and they both looked up at Felix with no small measure of relief. Felix just gave a little quirk of the corner of his mouth and sat down so they were in a lopsided triangle.

"I don't know," Ingrid said, maybe having lost her train of thought.

"I do," Sylvain said. "And I know it might seem like the kid is forcing my hand, but I've been thinking about this for weeks."

"I know you have."

Sylvain glanced at Felix, wondering where he might stand — if he could even follow where they'd gotten to in the conversation. The lull worked just fine for that.

"I just genuinely feel it will be different now," Sylvain said. "I'm sober. I have my friends. I'm trying not to be a selfish asshole by doing the right thing."

"You were never an asshole," Felix said, bluntly. "Maybe you did some stupid things, but it eats you up. Plenty of people have gone to their graves with far less regret than that."

Sylvain opened his mouth to argue, and instead hung his head for a moment. Felix scrutinized Sylvain like something about him had changed.

"Fair," he said. Harsh, but maybe he liked harsh in some ways. It kept him from being too destructive. Too self-destructive.

"So what are you going to do about it?" Felix asked.

_Very you,_ Sylvain thought, wanting to cut through the nonsense and just come to some conclusion, to be done with it. An easy answer. An easy answer he didn't have, unfortunately. Sylvain drummed his fingers idly on the floor.

"I've got a pretty good idea," he said, finally.


	41. No One Left But Me

The day hadn't even really started and Sylvain was already sore.

Sylvain felt a pull in his shoulders when he raised his arms above a certain point, and though a squire was trying to fit his cuirass to his chest, he stopped to test his range of motion. The last few weeks had involved a great deal of hard riding; when the Empire had taken the Silver Maiden, he'd ridden hard to Gautier to personally send news to his father that the end was nigh. He could have stayed — maybe he should have stayed — but he hadn't. He'd ridden hard right back to Fhirdiad. Dimitri had wanted him there for the final stand. One last chance to prove his loyalty — his colours, his heirdom, his courage.

And, if he was being selfish, he knew Dimitri needed him.

"Sorry," he said, absently, holding still so the squire could continue to buckle him in. His cuirass fit comfortably; it had been recently been reforged, as he was filling out a little more, reaching the apex of his twenties. Admittedly, it was a little bit about looks, too.

If he was to die on the battlefield, he might as well die looking at his absolute best. His father hadn't seemed to mind the exorbitant cost, either. Time with an armorer was at a premium during the war, even for the nobility.

He turned around so the squire could more easily get to the back. It brought him to facing the door of the war tent, where a familiar face was peeking in at him, pale and sleek.

"Marianne," he said, wryly. "Are you spying on me?"

She flushed.

"No," she said. "I just… um… thought I'd say good luck."

"Well, thank you," Sylvain replied. She ducked her chin a little, eyes low. He'd tried several times over the years to get under her shell, but he'd never been very successful. Few people were. It felt radical to get even that much out of her. But Sylvain thought he understood her, because it was the same way he understood a lot of things: by accepting that there wasn't much of an alternative. In Marianne's case, he knew that the fastest way to get out of her terrible situation was to find a man that was stronger and kinder. It was odd to think that Dimitri's precarious state was an improvement on her home life, but an improvement was an improvement. He wasn't sure he'd choose differently, anyway, if he had even less recourse than he already did.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

“No,” Sylvain replied. "Come in here, people are going to be mad if you're all wet."

Marianne gave him a very small, very tight smile, and she slipped inside the tent properly. She was already wet, as the skies had been steadily drizzling all day, and her hood wasn't up. The tiny flyaways of her braids had caught beads of rain. She didn't seem to know what to do with herself once she was inside. Sylvain caught his squire's eye and nodded his head in some general direction. The squire rushed off to fetch a glass of wine for them both, pouring Marianne's cut with water. Sylvain didn't generally like to drink before battle, but this was to be his last, so it didn't really matter. Better in his belly than raided by the Imperial army.

"I was thinking," she said, in that mousy little voice, and she smoothed her skirts out behind her and sat down. "Maybe… we'll see some old friends tonight."

"Classmates," he said. There was a difference, small but profound. Only some of them were friends, largely in the passive tense, but he was more concerned about someone else overhearing and going one step further in his corrections: some of them were_ traitors_, and people in Faerghus didn’t ever really talk about traitors, unless it was to express some desire to send them to their graves.

Traitors were never too far from Sylvain’s mind, though. It was impossible for them not to be, given they had grown up together, and Sylvain thought that when he died, maybe he would see them again. Then again, maybe not.

He was almost certainly going to hell.

“What will you do if you see them?” Marianne asked, all round-eyed curiosity, but her voice was shrinking already.

“I don’t know,” Sylvain said. He looked down into his drink and frowned when he realized how little he already had left. “Kill them, I guess.”

Marianne flinched. Sylvain could only ignore her disturbed gaze for so long.

“Weren’t you all really close?” Marianne asked.

“Yeah,” Sylvain replied, “but that was a lifetime ago. They betrayed the Kingdom, so...”

He trailed. He did not know why he was trying to remind her of that. All she knew about them was that they were traitors, and that he was not, and he could neither defend his childhood friends nor could he defend his flippancy in wanting to kill them.

Sylvain polished off his glass and shrugged.

“Wouldn’t you do the same with Ignatz? Or Lorenz?”

“No,” Marianne said. “I think I would die first."

Sylvain chuckled and nodded. _Ignatz_, he wanted to say, _is nothing to worry about._ He's deadly with a bow, but his heart is soft. And Lorenz, he could have told her, would hesitate to kill a woman. It might be avoided. Or rather, he might avoid it — Marianne couldn't. She simply wasn't made for self-preservation. One looked at her confirmed it; she stood as though uncomfortable with life itself, even though it grew in her. She was shivering, and he wasn't sure it was because of the rain. The fact that she was out in it in the first place concerned him. Her very presence there felt abhorrent to Sylvain, but he wouldn't say as much out loud.

Sylvain looked down at the squire buckling his greaves, and then back at Marianne.

"Hey, Marianne," he said. "You should get out of here."

She didn't say anything. She didn't seem to acknowledge that he'd said anything, either, at least not for a full minute, and then she looked at him. Her big eyes were wet with tears; one clung to her lower lashes, desperate not to fall.

"I mean it," Sylvain said. "Before things get ugly. You should get your favourite horse, that nice grey one. She's real gentle, but she's hardy, you know? You should take her and go."

"But…" she trailed.

"Ride south until you meet the Imperial army," Sylvain said. "Give yourself up to them. Tell them your name, who you are. They'll take you straight to Edelgard, I bet."

She looked very startled, and it stood to reason. Why was he telling her any of that? On the eve of battle, just before the Empire cut through the last of the Kingdom Army on their way to the Church's stronghold in Fhirdiad, why would he tell her, weak and terrified and heavy with child, to abandon them?

"Or don't," he said, a little softer. "What do I know?"

Marianne didn't seem to know what to say to that. She rose, setting down her untouched drink, and she gave him the clumsiest, most frenzied little curtsey and rushed off. Sylvain exhaled, long and slow, and then tested the range of motion in his shoulders again. He thanked his squire as he finished up, and he stepped out of the tent. Marianne was already out of sight, vanished into the chaos of the war-camp.

Sylvain turned his eyes to the walls of Fhirdiad in the distance to the north, where he could see only the tallest tower. He pivoted, armour clanking softly, and looked to what he could see of the south — rows and rows of tents, but beyond that, perhaps half a day's march away, the Imperial army.

Edelgard had hacked her way through anything Sylvain had helped put in her way, but like their old board games back at the Academy, his king was on the verge of being taken again.

He thought he might like to die out there and not have to see it.

Sylvain went to the war tent, and as he walked, soldiers moved aside to clear his path. More and more tents were being raised, tents for the future wounded and tents for the future dead, and tents in which men and women could sleep and eat and wait out their march on the frontlines. It all seemed quite funny to him. He wondered who would be alive to take them out, a mere day from now — would they really fight to the last man?

His father had told him stories about wars in Sreng and Duscur, and the wars of their forefathers to keep the Kingdom's hold on the eastern territories that would one day slip from their grasp, and the battle for the Kingdom's liberation. In every one, warriors with honour and dignity fought to the last breath, choosing to leave this world rather than see one in which they'd lost.

Surely some people survived these things.

He knew plenty of stories, didn't he? Someone always came back to tell them.

He passed Mercedes by one of the healing tents, her motherly voice rising above the din without ever breaking with gentleness. He caught her eye and winked, and she smiled and turned her gaze back to her battalion of healers. She could live, he thought. She didn't have the same spirit as those raised in knightly households. She could retreat.

He ducked into the war tent. A great mahogany table had been carted from the castle to the Plains, with a dozen chairs with scrolling armrests and hay-stuffed seats to match. Most were empty, some because their occupants had better things to do than listen to their king, and some because their occupants were already slain. Sylvain passed his hand over the backrest of Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius' old seat.

He'd heard a lot of things about what had happened at the Silver Maiden.

He still had his hand on that seat back when Dimitri acknowledged him.

"Sylvain," Dimitri said, his voice low and steady.

"Almost ready to go," Sylvain replied. "Let's make it back alive, huh?"

He didn't believe that. Dimitri didn't either; Dimitri just scoffed, a hard sound off his teeth. Sylvain didn't bother doubling down on that kind of reassurance; his king wasn't interested in it. Neither was a single man in Dimitri's personal army. Like him, they'd all been raised from birth for this kind of moment, this do-or-die, and while Sylvain was sure many of them intended to come back victorious, he knew Dimitri didn't.

Dimitri was here for one thing.

"As long as I leave her corpse strewn on the battlefield," Dimitri said, "I don't care how I make it back to Fhirdiad."

Sylvain nodded.

"Alright," he said, cheerfully. "Do you need anything from me before I go make final preparations with my battalion?"

"No," Dimitri replied, curtly. And then, with a hardness to his voice that had Sylvain swallowing his breath: "You won't falter, will you?"

"Me, falter?" Sylvain replied. Dimitri's gaze flitted to his feet and then back up again. Sylvain was moving to the door, taking casual steps backwards, but his voice never strayed from casual: "Trust me, Your Majesty. I'm looking forward to seeing them on the battlefield as much as you are."

Dimitri gave a small huff, something that might have been a chuckle just five years ago. He looked to Rodrigue's chair as Sylvain met with the tent door. He said: "It's a shame we were unable to hold onto Fraldarius, after Rodrigue's death. Do you think Felix will be there to claim it?"

Sylvain paused, a hand on the tent flap.

"No," he said, rather confidently. "He'll come from the South, too. All of them will."

Dimitri watched him like he was hungry.

"How do you know?"

Sylvain shrugged.

"They're Black Eagles," he said. "They flock together."

He left before he could catch Dimitri's reaction. It wasn't really that he was afraid of seeing it — he knew what he was up against. It also wasn't that he was afraid of revealing his own — that was always going to be something between them, a slow and bitter grudge that Sylvain couldn't make good on even with a thousand years of servitude.

Sylvain left because walking out of that conversation was something, one tiny, pathetic little thing, that he had a choice in.

The rain picked up in early evening, when Sylvain was eating dinner in his tent. He only knew because the pitter-patter of it on the canvas above his head picked up speed to a firm drumroll, awaiting the the march of feet. He asked for a report. A soldier informed him that the Imperial army was gathered just an hour south, and that they would likely engage at nightfall. Sylvain and the other generals would be due to leave for their positions shortly. There were some changes in plans, too. They were moving quicker than anticipated, and the church's offered forces wouldn't arrive in time.

_Isn't that just perfect? _Sylvain thought.

The whole thing seemed silly to him. Even if Faerghus won, their forces had been spent over years of long, arduous war. People were starving. Families were breaking down. Was was the church going to do? Set them on a campaign to reconquer? He had to laugh.

All this, for a church and a king that wanted one woman dead.

But before that came to pass, he was to finish his dinner. Maybe it was because it was the last he would ever eat, but it tasted a little better than usual. It was a roast rabbit, which was a pleasantly earthy meat, cooked in a wine sauce. It could have used a hell of a lot more salt, but there was no sense wishing for better. Sometimes life wasn't fair.

Dedue was the next to poke his head in. He and Sylvain exchanged nodded hellos, and then Dedue approached one of the soldiers sitting in that very tent. Sylvain watched them have a very brief, very quiet conversation. Dedue took something from a satchel and placed it in the soldier's hand, and then he turned to leave, but he paused at the door.

Sylvain gave him a questioning look.

"Have you seen Marianne?" Dedue asked.

"A couple hours ago," he replied. "Why?"

"Her horse is gone," Dedue replied, sternly.

Sylvain took a bite. He couldn't just enjoy it, huh? He worried the tines of his fork between his lips for a moment and then he set it down very carefully, swallowed his bite, and looked at Dedue. Dedue stared back at him with narrowed eyes.

"She probably left," he said.

"I beg your pardon?" Dedue replied.

Sylvain shrugged.

"I figured, girl like her… she's not cut out for this." Sylvain leant back in his seat, wrapping an arm around the back as he twisted to better watch Dedue's reaction. "I mean, look at her. You really think Marianne is going to stand out there in a rainstorm, casting physic, knowing she's just patching people up so they can go out there and die next time?"

Dedue did not say anything for a moment.

"Think about it," Sylvain urged him, and then he turned back to his dinner.

For a moment, he could pretend that he could go back to his dinner, to what was left of his life, and be there in peace. He was going to die. They were all going to die. Couldn't he just have one last dinner without dealing with this bullshit?

"Did you tell her to go?" Dedue asked.

"I didn't tell her to do anything," Sylvain said. "I just said she should."

Dedue came over to the table. He was not the violent sort, and never had been, and for that reason, Sylvain did not fear that he was about to get ripped from his chair, but he did imagine it anyway. Probably because he wanted it to be over. Probably because he was too used to Dimitri. Sylvain looked up at Dedue and asked him, silently, to just get it over with, but Dedue just pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I won't tell His Majesty," Dedue said, very carefully. He leaned back in the chair and looked at the dinner table. Sylvain pushed his plate away from him. "We both know this battle won't be won. At most, he will prevail over that woman."

Sylvain was not so sure about that. It wasn't that Dimitri wasn't capable; he was more than capable. Highly likely to, in fact. But that wasn't victory for anyone but him. Killing Edelgard would not save Faerghus, or the Church. The damage had long been done, a festering wound that hadn't been closed up in decades.

"Why aren't you running, too?" Sylvain asked. Dedue said nothing, so he added: "Don't tell me you've never considered it."

Dedue sighed.

"I don't expect you to understand. Your heart was never in this," he said.

"Never," Sylvain agreed. "But you know why."

Dedue looked away from him.

"You've always known, because it's the same for you. We serve someone until we die, or we just die."

Dedue shook his head and rose to his feet again. He left without another word. _That's fine,_ Sylvain wanted to call after him. _None of us ever had a choice anyway._

Dimitri delivered his last speech to the armies not thirty minutes after that. He stood upon an old stone platform, one that had housed a temple thousands of years ago, and on rain-soaked stairs he bellowed out one last treatise on humanity's weaknesses, and how _that woman'_s campaign presumed that people could survive such a radical blow to their way of life. The people, he said, did not care about rumours of dragons. They cared about the sanctity of their lands, and the safety of their homes, and having a good and gentle lord seeing that they survived their winters and their rains. That is what the small people cared for — and this woman, this red woman, this Emperor, this _bitch_ — she presumed to know better for the people, even if better meant starving them in war, slaughtering their children, conquering their lands.

Sylvain nodded through it, seated on his least favourite warhorse. It felt nasty to pick one to die that day, but he thought the others had been good to him over the years, and they did not care about honour anyway. This one had stepped on his toes a few too many times, and though it was petty, it was the only judgement he had available to him. Still, he patted his horse anyway, his gauntlet making strange noises against the plate armour protecting his stallion's neck, reassuring him: the talking would be over soon, and then they'd do the thing both of them were raised to do.

"We will not tolerate a world with such injustice!" Dimitri bellowed, and the legions of soldiers raised their fists in the air, hollering. Sylvain did too, mouthing his own cry of support.

"We will prevail! We will get our revenge!"

Sylvain nodded, and raised his fist again.

_Yeah, _he thought. _Revenge! Whoo!_

It occurred to him as he led his battalion to the eastern flank that he hadn't really said a proper goodbye to anyone. He wasn't sure if he regretted that; saying a goodbye didn't make you very popular, as a soldier, as it did not show faith in the cause. Looking around him, Sylvain was convinced that he was not the only one prepared to die, but he could concede that he was perhaps the person most looking forward to it. He supposed goodbyes didn't matter. He was surrounded by career soldiers, men and women who had devoted their lives to this very occasion, whether they made it through one war or two or even three. Every one of them knew their day would come, and dying valiantly at least let them die with hope in their heart.

Sylvain imagined them all spread out in the field, their horses fallen, their bodies broken, their voices crying out for the end. Long Live the Kingdom, Goddess Save Our King, For-ever May He Reign…

Each one, dying, each one convinced that he alone would perish, and that the moment he closed his eyes for the last time, the rest would miraculously rise and win the day and make it all worth something.

Sylvain shifted in the saddle, just to get more comfortable. The rain lashed down, beating a staccato on his shoulder pauldrons, plastering his hair to his scalp and dribbling down the back of his neck, settling in his fur collar. He liked the cold. He always loved the cold. It wasn't the snow, but he felt fortunate to die here, in his homeland, and not as some invading force. Imagine dying in Dierdru? Sylvain couldn't fathom it; he was a man of Faerghus.

The line was ready. He could see the enemy line, too, smaller than he expected, but he would have been a fool to discount them. He knew who was leading them, and he knew the proud and talented generals amongst their ranks.

Sylvain took his flag from its holster, the great blue banner of Loog mounted on his gryphon, and he held it aloft. It would be easy to cast it forward to signal the charge — four muscles in his arm, a myriad more to shout an order or some witty encouragement. His battalion was ready. Born ready. They were good people, and he was sore that he would be listening to them die soon, but if there was any justice in the world, he would be struck down first and not have to hear it.

_We'll see some old friends tonight,_ Marianne had said. _What will you do if you see them?_

Sylvain hated to think of them, but he did. He cast his gaze across the enemy lines, looking for Ingrid. For Felix. He didn’t find them. He couldn’t know if they were even alive. Felix must have been, at least six weeks ago — he’d heard what had happened in Arianrhod, after all.

Maybe he would be spared fighting them.

Sylvain could not bring his arm down to signal the charge. The enemy line hadn't moved yet, and he preferred a defensive approach, waiting for them to come into line of fire before moving forward into theirs. The rain was so heavy that the fight would be very close-quarters, which was fine by him, as he could lose himself in it. He thought he might be reckless, however, when he saw Edelgard at their helm. She commanded her army forward, and Sylvain watched her through the driving rain.

Across the battlefield, their eyes met. His armed hand tightened around the Lance of Ruin's handle. From this distance, he could only imagine that she was bracing herself too. She was almost startling to look at; in full battle dress, she seemed so much bigger than the waifish young woman he'd played board games with and joked about marrying. She was carrying an axe, or at least some approximation of an axe. The great bone structure was bigger than her own torso, and it had monstrous fangs around the inner lip. Sylvain imagined that if he was not cleaved in two, he would be crushed by it. He imagined the blood, and the gore, and the ending of his own life.

He opened his mouth to shout, prepared to call.

His hand was still in the air. He could feel the entire line of his battalion tense and ready to go, itching for it, their lances forward and their horses fighting the bit. The horses’ hooves slid in the mud as they stomped, their great flanks heaving, their breath fogging on the cold air. And the other generals beyond, and their battalions, waiting, waiting, waiting... for a command.

And then there was a great shout and a cry, one that had Sylvain jolting in the saddle, nearly dropping his arm with the command. His horse wheeled around, and he turned his head sharply to find the noise, and his eyes settled on one of his own soldiers.

That soldier was being consumed by some demonic force.

By what, Sylvain could not explain, but he had seen it before. This time, the soldier did not fight it, even as great black tendrils burst from his own hand, weaving in and out of the plates of his armour to attack the limbs below. The soldier did scream — any would, at least until the forces subsuming him crawled into his mouth. Sylvain watched, frozen, as his flesh rippled outward, consuming even the horse underneath him. A red light flashed under the black, like fire under smoke, and there was a squelch, like—

Sylvain felt bile at the back of his throat.

His own line of soldiers nearly broke, men and women and horses skittering backwards and even making to flee, but he shouted "no!" and they held, even though he wanted to run. Sylvain's eyes darted up their own line, and through the rain, he could see bursts of red and black. The soldier by him was almost wholly gone, replaced by a beast towering well overhead, emerging from the tendrils like a snake from an old skin. A beast from a human skin. Sylvain could only watch on his anxious horse as the beast stretch out its great muscled arms, thrashing its armoured neck. It settled, but it did not still — its armoured neck undulated over Sylvain's head, wearing a human mask over distinctly serpentine jaw.

Sylvain caught Edelgard's eye and he saw nothing but resolve.

“Sylvain,” Edelgard called, not fifty feet away. "Is this the cause you fight for?!"

"Edelgard," he called back. He found himself smiling, even as he shook. His old weakness — the anger just didn't stand a chance.

"You remember the Tower of Black Winds,” she called. "And what the Church did to you there. I ask you, one last time, to stand with me."

"Still haven't given up on me, huh?" he called back. The shake in his voice was impossible to quell, and he could barely keep his eyes on her; his attention was on the beasts now scattered amongst the front line. "That's very magnanimous of you."

He had to fight back a shiver. It was the rain, he told himself, but no. It wasn't.

He felt the beast standing behind him, ready to fight with him, and he looked at Edelgard ahead of him. This was the woman that the Church threw Kingdom bodies at? Sylvain felt she might step over his and those of his battalion almost effortlessly, her great red cape trailing through the muck of mud and blood.

And he would have died for what?

The fucking Church of Seiros, which had killed his brother long before he had? Nothing before him served Dimitri.

He could hear shouts and cries all up and down the lines.

He turned in the saddle, sharply; a grievous error for a seasoned soldier, no doubt, as his attention should be on the enemy line. He was looking for Dimitri, but through the rain, he could not see him. He couldn't see anything. It was though the world beyond was gone, and in that moment, even amongst so many soldiers, he felt alone. Cowardly. Unwilling to die. Not for this.

In that desperate moment, he looked for Dimitri and saw nothing, and he knew, deep in the storm, the Tempest King only cared about one person, and it certainly wasn't him.

Sylvain withdrew his arm and his flag, and he let the Lance of Ruin drop, its bladed tip inches from the ground. He felt the tremble of confusion amongst his soldiers, and his stomach lurched. Their confusion redoubled when he dismounted. Unmanned, his horse paced forward, and he patted it on the neck as he walked forward.

He dared meet Edelgard’s eyes again. From this distance he couldn’t quite make her expression clear, but he could tell they were looking at each other. The rain continued to lash down, turning the ground under his feet to mud, but he trudged through it. A line of fifty mages flanked Edelgard’s sides, balls of fire glowing between their palms. Behind them, soldiers, and then cavaliers. Sylvain felt the deep fear of imminent death, but he carried on anyway — if he didn't die at her hands, he'd die somewhere else. A tear caught on his lower lashes and he wiped it away with his gloved fingertips. It was pointless. Within ten steps he was weeping, and he was glad for the rain lashing down. He thought it might go unnoticed.

At her feet, he fell to one knee. He felt the mud seep in. Despite it all, he almost laughed, realizing he was nearly as tall as her, even on one knee.

"I, Sylvain Jose Gautier," he told her. The words fell off his teeth hard: "By my free will admit myself to your service, and declare—"

Her hand fell firmly upon the crown of his head.

"I ask for no such oaths from the Black Eagles," Edelgard cut him off. "You know that. Come. We have a battle to win."

She removed her hand from his head and offered it to him instead.

He didn't need it to get up, but he took it anyway.

There was a quality to battle that never failed to clear his mind.

It should have been hard, in hindsight, to turn against his own, but despite the storm, Sylvain's mind felt clearer than it had in had in years. The Church's reinforcements arrived before they could even push back the Gautier battalions, and to cut through them felt right — at least as right as war could be. Sylvain felt no fear cutting down beasts; he had done that before. He felt no terror facing down the Archbishop, and seeing her clad in armour even felt like seeing her in a more honest form. Edelgard did not speak to him save for orders, but there was a fluidity to fighting at her side that he had not felt in many years.

The anger and hatred he had towards her simmered low, but it felt good to be in her good graces. It felt good to please someone simply by being there — like his presence added something valuable.

There was no time for conversation, and saved for orders barked to the surrounding armies, he did not speak to her again. Heading north up the eastern bank, they closed in on Dimitri's forces. Sylvain's heart pounded but he had never felt so alive as he did in that moment, barely an hour after his planned death. His thighs burned as he ran through mud, and his arms ached as he met the army in combat. He took the tip of a blade to his side but killed his attacker swiftly, the adrenaline coursing too quickly for him to care for a small flesh wound. He was delighted when a close call with a demonic beast had him thrusting the Lance up into its soft underside, his feet sliding in the muck, and Petra darted in, swift and nimble, to split the beast sternum to groin with her sword. She flashed him a look of surprise. He didn't even flinch at the stink of the guts that spilled around him. The creature died quick, with as much mercy as could be managed against a thrashing beast.

They crossed the river at the bridge; it might have been quicker to ford it if the waterline was not running high from the storm, and Dimitri's forces met them at its mouth. Sylvain felt a drum of apprehension there, knowing he had no knowledge of what was coming, but Edelgard cut through, leaving him to clear the scraps with the rest of her battalion. She showed no signs of stopping, which bode well, considering the fight ahead of her. If the choke had taken any longer to clear, then Sylvain might have had time to question. To doubt. To renege.

But he refused.

On the steps of the old temple foundation, Edelgard met Dimitri in bloody combat.

Dimitri was a great deal bigger than her, and he seemed monstrously so, with his great shaggy fur mantle and his jet black armour. Edelgard's sleek breastplate and spiked elbow cops meant business, but Sylvain had no doubt that if it came to blows in close quarters, she would be done for. She would have to endure.

She started towards him, her sabatons hard on the stone. Dimitri bellowed; he was the first to lunge, thrusting Areadbhar to her gut. Edelgard pivoted, hooking the great jaw of her axe under Areadbhar's head and knocking it aside, and she stepped in close to swing. Dimitri moved around her, lunging like a beast, and he caught her upside the head with Areadbhar's other end. Sylvain watched her headdress go flying, one horn broken, her hair flung loose on one side. She did not stop, not for an instant, circling him once before he got impatient and came at her again. This she merely sidestepped, and then, lacking the range to cut him, bashed him in the chest with the side of her axe. Dimitri staggered, enough for her to swing properly, and he blocked overhead. Areadbhar wobbled but did not break; Edelgard brought a knee up and smashed him in the groin, which might have crippled him had he not been armoured. He bellowed in pain and lunged; Areadbhar slipped from his hands entirely as he grasped for her throat with his gauntleted hands.

Sylvain started up the steps. He was too slow — Hubert stepped out before him, and Dimitri was knocked to his feet by a blast of dark magic, buying Edelgard just enough time to recover.

As Dimitri climbed to his feet, his gaze roved over the people around them. Sylvain found himself taking a step back as their eyes locked. In that instant, he felt fear of being called out to, but as he stood, Dimitri's eyes narrowed. He said nothing, but he didn't need to.

That gaze said far more.

Edelgard was upon him again, taking a great swing that he only managed to jump back from. Unarmed, he had nothing with which to defend himself but his sword, but he had no time to draw it; when Edelgard closed the gap between them and swung again, he got his hands up and caught the axe by its head. Sylvain heard the crunch of bone, and Dimitri snarled but he did not relent; one hand useless, he still fought the axe off with the other.

He did not succeed.

Edelgard forced him to the ground with it, and there was a crunch as she battered him again. It wasn't enough to stop him. There was a fury on him, and the sounds gurgling from his throat reminded Sylvain of hunting. Hunting boars. He found himself moving forward, even if there was nothing he could do to intervene — Hubert was in the same position, prepared but unable to strike without also striking his Emperor.

Dimitri got an elbow up and knocked Edelgard in the face. Blood poured from her temple, and it was enough for him to get to his feet again. A crest alit on the air, rich purple and louder than Sylvain had ever heard before. Edelgard stepped lightly, unbothered. She was relentless, too — she pivoted the axe in her hand and swung one last time.

There was a sick crunch as the dull side of the axe connected with Dimitri's gut.

He fell in a heap on the ground. A shock of red spread across the stone, carried quickly by the running water.

"No!" Dimitri rasped. "Not yet! I can't die just yet… I must…"

Sylvain's heart flung itself away. Something caught in his throat — a plea — a cry — an admonishment. _Something._ He thought to beg, or insist, but all that came out was a helpless "no" — he was too far to do anything about it.

It was already too late.

The blow had already come.

Edelgard lowered her axe and stood over him, her compact frame steady. A great fog of breath fell off her lips and into the cold rain, the only indication that she'd just been inches from his vengeance. The blood on her face nearly vanished, lost amidst her colours.

Dimitri struggled to his knees. She watched him do it, unthreatened. Every movement demanded he gasp in pain, and the blood continued to spill. He wrapped an arm around his gut as if it might buy him time,but for what?

He would never get up again.

Edelgard appraised him and seemed to come to the same conclusion. She turned and walked away.

"Edelgard!!" Dimitri bellowed after her.

She did not look back. She walked off into the rain. Sylvain watched her go, and he found himself nearly shaking. He wanted to call after her to come back, to finish this for reason, but he didn't. Hubert cast him a bare glance and left, too.

Byleth still stood there, though. She wore black regalia, and her eerie eyes almost shone in the dark. Sylvain wanted to ask her what to do, but he wasn't her student anymore. She hadn't been his professor in a great number of years, and he thought that he must look unrecognizable to her.

She looked at Dimitri, who was still shouting after Edelgard. _Edelgard, Edelgard! El!_

And then she walked away, too.

Sylvain did not know what to do.

"Dimitri," he said.

Dimitri ignored him. In fact, he turned his head away.

"You're a coward," he said. "A traitor!"

Sylvain crouched down at a safe distance, and when he found he could not do so comfortably in his armour, he eased himself down to sit properly. Dimitri laughed, something bitter and scornful, his arm still clamped tight around his midsection. Sylvain tried not to think about what was being held back by it.

"I am a coward," he said, finally. "But I am loyal."

Dimitri barked out a laugh.

_"Loyal?"_

“If I’m not loyal, why have I been leading your armies for years? Why have I been helping you hold back the Empire?” Sylvain demanded. He let out a long breath. "I picked _you_ over Edelgard. I picked you over Felix and Ingrid, over my friends."

"You didn’t pick _me,_” Dimitri shot back. “You picked cowardice! You picked whatever put the least strain on your spine!"

"Sure," Sylvain agreed. He moved forward a foot, very carefully. "I…

"You let each and every one of them get away from me," Dimitri snarled.

Sylvain inhaled sharply.

"Me?" Sylvain demanded. "I didn't… _Dimitri_._ You _didn't give them a reason to stay."

Dimitri just snarled, and though he tried to move forward, he could only fold, and gnash his teeth in pain. Sylvain found himself looking back into the storm, to wherever Edelgard had gone. Surely she would come back and finish this.

His heart felt heavy, but this was the inevitability he'd woken up with this morning; the death that could not be avoided. He hadn't thought he'd be around to witness this, but it was oddly calming, too. Around them, the last of the battle raged on, with soldiers retreating, and the last of the beasts put down. Sylvain could hear their cries, the clash of metal, the whinnies of horses.

"What does it matter?" Dimitri said, his voice dropping from a snarl to something quieter, more resigned. "In the end, there's no one left but me."

Sylvain wanted to tell him that he was there, but was he? Hadn't he made his choice just hours ago, and then five years before that?

"I wanted to be there," Sylvain said, softly. "I didn't want it to be just you. Did I count for nothing? What about Dedue, and Mercedes, and Ashe?"

He swallowed hard. Dimitri ignored him, now fully folded over. His long hair, matted with rain and mud, hung in his face. Sylvain edged closer still, and then he was fully in Dimitri's reach. He reached out to put a hand on Dimitri's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Sylvain said. "I'm… I'm sorry, Dimitri."

Someone was coming. He turned quickly, just in time to have the fine point of a relic mere inches from the soft meat of his cheek. He might have had his skull run through, but the owner stopped short, her gloved hands wound so tightly around the handle that she was shaking. Sylvain looked up at Ingrid with a jolt, and she gasped. Right behind her was Felix, a sword in each hand.

He looked up at the two of them with a sinking relief.

"Sylvain," Ingrid said, shocked, and she dropped Lúin entirely. Sylvain was nearly knocked over when she dropped to his side and embraced him, her arms around his neck so tight that he could have choked. He shakily brought a hand to her back and looked up at Felix, who was looking at Dimitri. Sylvain let out a long breath as Ingrid released him just as fast, putting her hands to his cheeks and holding him. "Oh, oh— we thought you were dead."

"We have to go," Felix said soberly, but there was an undertone to his voice that had Sylvain swallowing his breath.

"We can't leave him," Sylvain said.

"The army is moving north to take Fhirdiad," Felix said. "If we don't want to get stranded here in the storm, we'll go with them." He paused, and he turned his gaze to the north. "Besides. This isn't over yet."

It felt over to Sylvain; he was already on time that wasn't supposed to be his, and he ached from head to toe. Ingrid was petting his face, murmuring soft things to him, but he gently pulled from her.

"What about Dedue? Mercedes?" Sylvain asked. "What do we do with Dimitri? He'll die alone…"

He watched Felix purse his lips, and then let out a long breath. He couldn't look at Dimitri. He didn't seem to know how to.

"Let's load him into a cart and go," Ingrid said. "Are you okay, Sylvain? Can you stand?"

Sylvain nodded. Dimitri said nothing, still folded over, but he was still breathing, his broad back rising and falling under his plate armour.

Commandeering a cart was easier than Sylvain expected. Not that he expected much, given that his ability to imagine his own future had been reduced to the mere minutes ahead of him, but his friends had risen to be generals in an army that opposed the nation of their birth, and watching them give orders and make arrangements was almost dizzying. Felix and Ingrid worked together seamlessly, trading barbs as fluidly as they traded orders, and Sylvain just followed their lead, helping them load Dimitri in as quickly and carefully as they could, eager to keep pace with the rest of the army. Felix still intended to fight in it, and he loaded all four of their relics in the cart, tossing them in carelessly like common training weapons. Ingrid was unsure, but she chose to climb in with Sylvain. Sylvain sat at Dimitri's head, Dimitri's torso laid in his lap; at that point he was too weak to do more than protest, and Ingrid sat at his side, pressing a wool blanket against his gut to stopper the bleeding as long as they could. 

Why they didn't let go, Sylvain didn't know. Dimitri might have died in minutes with the blood unstoppered. For a long time after, he thought about how cruel it was to keep him there, but Dimitri muttered on in his lap about vengeance, revenge, retribution — maybe he would have stayed alive longer merely out of spite.

And why wouldn't he? Spite had driven him for years.

The Dimitri he'd known had died a long time ago, and yet he was only truly seeing it now.

When it came time to get in or get on a horse, Felix lingered at the foot of the cart.

"Come with us," Sylvain said.

Felix cast a dubious look at Dimitri. His bottom lip hung parted from the top, as if he were perpetually on the verge of saying something. It made him look little boy, even though he'd never been older or more refined. When Felix finally gave in and climbed in, he told the cart driver to go, and he settled in on Dimitri's other side without another word.

The cart was not covered, and the rain poured down on them. Sylvain didn't mind. He was already long soaked to the skin, and Ingrid didn't look much better, having been up in the wind on her pegasus. Felix pulled his hood up; it must have fallen back in battle. Dimitri stared up at the sky, blinking sluggishly, his teeth grit.

For a long moment, none of them spoke.

Then Ingrid said: "So… are you fighting for Edelgard now?"

Sylvain didn't reply for a moment. Dimitri had a bit of mud on his face, and he stopped to brush it aside. Dimitri hissed at the touch, even though it couldn't possibly have hurt him. Sylvain chewed through the thought.

"I don't really know," he said. "I'm just… here with my friends."

Ingrid gave a soft sigh, and she reached for him, a hand lingering on his forearm. When she didn't let go, he looked up at her and found her weeping quietly.

"Aww, Ingrid," he said. "Don't cry. It's okay. We're all here together now."

She nodded tearily, wiping her face with her sleeve. It didn't do her any good at all, but that was fine. Sylvain looked at Felix, who was staring down at Dimitri,his lips still parted. He was not crying, but there was something broken on his face that Sylvain hadn't seen in a long, long time. He couldn't quite reach Felix, especially not with Dimitri's mass pinning him at the thighs, nor a stab wound in his side that was making bending feel atrocious, but it was enough to look at him. To know that even if it wasn't okay, they were all alive.

They were together.

The road to Fhirdiad was straight and long, and even if they had been cared for better in the past few years, the rain had washed it out and rendered it slippery. They moved in a great chain with the other carts, each going over the same bumps and jags. Dimitri groaned with each one, his teeth grit.

"Sylvain," he said, finally.

"Yeah, buddy?" Sylvain replied, looking down at him.

"Fhirdiad may yet fall," Dimitri said, shakily. He closed his eyes for a moment. Sylvain worried about shaking him awake again. "Give her nothing. I would sooner see our lands barren and dead… than in… her hands…"

Sylvain nodded.

"Of course," he said. "She only wants the Church, after all."

Dimitri made a sound, low and amused, and then he choked on his own breath. Sylvain felt it though his legs, which grew sore and uncomfortable from being locked into place for so long, but he did not want to move Dimitri from his lap.

"And Ingrid…" Dimitri rasped next. "Look at me… you once called me too soft to rule… do you think the same now?"

Ingrid shook her head quietly, and she stroked Dimitri's face, tears still streaming down her cheeks.

"Rest," she told him, quietly. Tenderly. "Do you want to see Fhirdiad one last time?"

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

"Yes," he said. "I will die there, looking upon Lady Rhea's victory." He shifted suddenly, raising his head; the tension ran through his belly and prompted him to yell, and Sylvain eased his head back down, even as he called: "Felix!"

Felix ignored him.

"Felix!"

"Felix, for fuck's sake, he's dying," Sylvain said.

Felix still ignored him, even turning away a little to hide his face. Dimitri pawed at him, weakly, his gauntleted fingers trying to grip Felix's arm, or cape, or _something_. Felix let him paw for a moment, and then he took those fingers and pinned them still under his own.

"Conserve your strength, idiot," Felix said, his voice choked, face still stubbornly turned away. "We're not there yet."

Dimitri scoffed, and he closed his eyes again.

"I'm not going to cry for you," Felix told him, sharply. "Not after everything you put us through. Not after this. I thought I was done with this — and look where we are."

But he took Dimitri's hand closer to him, and hidden behind the fur edge of his hood, he held it to his face, and Sylvain could see his shoulders shaking. His voice trembled, just barely, just enough that Sylvain knew.

"You," Felix said. "You…"

And then there was a great explosion, so high that even without turning around, they could see the light rise on the sky above them. Felix and Ingrid turned sharply, Felix releasing Dimitri's hand and standing up in the cart. Tears had tracked clean trails through the mud on his face. Sylvain could only crane his neck to look, and he saw what they saw — great curls of flames enveloping one of Fhirdiad's tall towers, and the roofs of buildings burning. A cry slipped from Ingrid's mouth, and before any of them could speak, there was another explosion, and another. Cries rose up from the carts around them, from the battalions, from the armies —

"Ha," Dimitri murmured, barely audible above the din. "Your Flame Emperor claims another…"

"No…" Sylvain trailed. He shook his head. "The army hasn't reached the castle yet… we haven't…"

The cries from their side of the wall could not belong to the captured Kingdom soldiers alone. Even the Imperial army gasped and called out in horror, even as more explosions overtook the city. The fires curled higher.

"What?" Dimitri gasped.

"The Immaculate One," Felix said.

A great cry pierced the night air. Sylvain twisted best he could, his side screaming out in pain, and he saw great white wings extend, massive even in the distance. He clutched Dimitri to keep him from moving.

"Let me see!" Dimitri bellowed.

"Calm down," Ingrid said, fear on her voice.

"Turn him," Felix ordered, and the three of them did so, Dimitri crying out in pain as they did, moving his limbs in a circle, swinging his torso to face the castle. Dimitri ended up nearly in Felix's lap, his head against Felix's shoulder. The blanket fell away in the process, in the fumble — blood spilled fresh from his gut, and even replacing it, Sylvain knew he was not long for the world.

Sylvain, crouched in that cramped cart, his side singing out in pain, watched Dimitri's expression fall from anger to understanding. His brows softened, the fury in his eyes melting away. His mouth fell open in awe. The Immaculate One shrieked again, her terrible body perched upon the castle's walls. Even from such a distance, Sylvain could see parts of the stone parapet falling away under her weight. When she beat her wings, the flames were fanned, bowling over and then rising higher as the city was consumed.

"That is… no goddess…" Dimitri uttered.

Sylvain crawled to Felix's side, crammed somewhere between him and the cart wall, a leg tangled over Dimitri's arm. Ingrid stood at the front, and she shook her head in denial. In anger.

"Dimitri," Sylvain said. "Dimitri…"

"El," Dimitri murmured.

He was gone, just like that.

Ingrid let out a sob, and Sylvain opened an arm to her. She went to him, climbing into his lap, an arm around his neck. She groped for Felix, finding his hand, their arms around Dimitri as disappeared into death.

In that terrible chaos, they held each other, and then Felix pulled away.

"This isn't over," he said, peeling him out from under Dimitri, and away from their hands, their arms. Ingrid wiped at her eyes again, and she nodded firmly. Felix offered her a hand to help her up, and he pulled her to her feet. He grabbed his shield as soon as she was up, and he passed her Lúin. Both glowed, their crests like red heartbeats, and the light of the distant fires made them seem more fiery still.

The two of them looked to Sylvain.

He felt dead, too, pressed into the corner of that cart. Something had changed in him. He felt that he wasn't supposed to be there. What he knew now, what he had seen, was not something he had been meant to survive.

He shook his head.

"We'll be back," Ingrid promised, leaping from the cart and hitting the ground running. Felix followed immediately after, not looking back.

Sylvain sat there there, exhausted, watching them vanish into the crowds, weaving between carts and into the mustering efforts. His hand found the top of Dimitri's head, and he absently touched his friend's face, as if he might only be sleeping. Sylvain’s eyes felt heavy, too.

He was alone.

It was just him and his choice.


	42. Closure

Sylvain woke up with Felix crammed up against him. His long hair trailed across Sylvain's face, and he woke up specifically because one lock was under his nose, and it tickled terribly. Sylvain scrunched his face up trying to dislodge it, and when that failed, he had to extract his hand from the blankets to get it off. His other arm was trapped under Felix's ribs, and he was pretty sure he'd rather die than disturb his sleeping lover.

_Lover._

There was something nice about that, he thought — and though it had been weeks, he still wasn't quite used to the idea. Felix split his time quite evenly between the castle and the School of Sorcery, and it made for good practice in letting someone into his life that way. He'd shared his room and his bed with many, many people, but never with someone in a way that aspired to be permanent, and it was frightening, in a way, to learn _that_ sort of sharing. The lines of their long friendship had meant they'd taught themselves, each in their differing ways, how to avoid sharing, and now that had to be undone.

Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions across all of Fódlan, woke up every morning in the same bed as a person they loved, and they didn't think one bit about an alternative. It was normal.

He couldn't resist. He rolled over onto his side, jostling Felix in the process, but as Felix mumbled his gripes, he took him around the waist and nuzzled in.

"What time is it?" Felix grumbled.

"Way early," Sylvain lied. They'd slept in again. He ran the tip of his nose alongside Felix's neck, stopping at the crook of his jaw, and he started pressing little kisses there, one after the other. "What's the rush? You got plans?"

"Training," Felix murmured.

"That's not plans," Sylvain replied.

"It is when Linhardt needs company in the lab."

Weeks ago, that might have been complete nonsense to Sylvain, but here they were, in a world that hadn't changed at all but felt radically different. Felix liked to train down there, as it was quiet and there weren't knights still coming and going to distract him, and Linhardt did not pester him.

"Are you still going to Tailtean today?" Felix asked.

"Mhmm," Sylvain hummed into his hair.

"Be careful," Felix admonished him. He twisted a little in Sylvain's arms, then, just enough to fix an eye on him. "Are you sure you don't want me to come?"

"I'm not so sure about that," Sylvain replied, grinning and letting a hand slide south from Felix's chest. Felix chuckled, low and exasperated and _still_ walking into dirty jokes after decades of friendship, but he leant back into Sylvain's chest just the same.

_Yeah,_ Sylvain thought. He could get used to normal.

Springtime proper meant looking forward to meals again.

The preserved meats and vegetables of winter had long outstayed their welcome. The crops seasonal to northern Faerghus tasted like his childhood, but that wasn't the same as tasting _good_. The berries were the worst. If he never saw a cranberry again, it'd be too soon. One more mealy silverberry in his broth and he might simply choose to starve. If he had to pick one more crowberry seed out of his teeth, he'd lose his fucking mind. And nothing said a bad Faerghus winter like certain things appearing on the table, too many tubers or bear roots, which were a little bit like the carrots of the south but far less tasty. _No thanks,_ Sylvain would have said, if he wasn't trying to keep in good shape, or be teased for being picky at his age. 

But that morning, Sylvain got to the breakfast table to find the kitchen had fried up maple blossoms. His mouth watered at the mere sight; fresh stems and flowers from maple trees, fried in a light batter. Before he even bothered with the usual salted pork and starchy broth, he grabbed one between his fingers and bit into it and groaned.

"Save those for last," Ingrid admonished, looking like she might have smacked it out of his hand if she'd been quick enough. "If you eat them all before I get to them…"

"You'll kill me," Sylvain said, with his mouth full. They were hot and chewy, and he delighted to see the bright green blossoms nestled inside the batter, ready to shove the rest of it in his mouth. He groaned again, much louder than necessary. "Fuck! Felix. Have one."

Felix cast it a dubious look, as if his taste might have changed it all over the years, and he just shook his head. Ingrid gave in right then, standing up in her seat to seize one. Sylvain laughed around his mouthful when she sighed happily. Felix rolled his eyes, but he smiled a little, too.

"I'm surprised you didn't just inhale them before we got here," he remarked.

"There's been word from Edelgard's convoy," Ingrid said, the moment she swallowed. "They're close. They'll be here by early evening."

Sylvain nodded very nicely.

"Well, everything's ready, right?" he said, not because she needed the clarification, but rather just to remind her: fucking _breathe,_ girl.

"Of course everything's ready," Ingrid replied, a little bossy. She gave the plate of maple blossoms another eye, and she took another. "Everything's been ready for days, I just didn't expect to get word _now._"

"You're too worked up about this," Felix informed her. "Stop eating that junk and eat something with substance before you kill someone."

"I am going to kill _you _if you don't stop talking to me like that," Ingrid said, and she did not sit. She did, however, reach over the table and steal a piece of pork belly off Felix's plate with her fingers, and Felix grumbled at her. "_You_ haven't spent weeks preparing. _You_ aren't stressed."

"Get your fingers off my plate," Felix said, and when she reached for another piece, he raised an elbow to fend her off.

Sylvain watched them carry on like this for a full minute before he piped up:

"Do you need help? I was kind of planning to go on a hack today."

"_No_," Ingrid said, empathetically. That was too bad, because Sylvain thought she could really use another race across the fields. "Stay out of my way, be back early. Knowing Edelgard, _by_ early evening means it could be any time now. If they make good time, they could even be here by noon."

"Can you breathe, please?" Felix demanded.

"Alright," Sylvain said. About time to head out, he thought. A little alone time suited him just fine.

After fetching his satchel from his — and Felix's — room, Sylvain headed down to the stables. The weather was nice enough by Faerghus standards that going without a coat was just fine by him, and he had a blanket to wrap himself in if the skies opened up. He whistled as he tacked up Horse. She was plenty happy to see him (or at least the roots of some vegetables he'd brought from the kitchens) and she huffed in his face as he scratched her neck and behind the ears. The stable kids hadn't done a completely thorough job on her stall in the past day, so he tidied it up before bringing her to the cross-ties to give her a quick brushing. She fussed at that, her feet a little sensitive, but she was happy to be doted on. 

He wasn't alone in the stables, of course. If he had been, he might have talked to her a lot more, as he used to do at his work outside of Enbarr, but he settled for whistling to her here or there, mumbling when no one seemed close at earshot. He could hear someone hammering nails somewhere up another aisle, and there were kids playing in one of the stalls, blowing off their work in favour of loud chatter. Some horse a couple stalls down wouldn't shut up, looking for attention every time someone walked by. There was someone singing, too, a woman with a clear voice, singing something that sounded a little bit folksy. Sylvain found himself humming along between words for his horse; he recognized it from somewhere, but he didn't know where.

"What's that song?" he called. "It's on the tip of my tongue."

The woman abruptly stopped singing.

Sylvain chuckled, and he picked up Horse's saddle and put it on her back. It seemed a bit more swayed than it had a year ago; she really was getting old. When the woman didn't pick back up, he teased: "It's nice, you don't have to stop."

He heard the shuffling of boots in hay and a stall door down the aisle opened. He glanced, smiling, and then his smile faded when he saw Captain de Gouges. She was dressed down in what was the most casual outfit he'd ever seen her in, but the look in her eyes was just the same.

"Never mind," he said, very curtly, turning his attention back to Horse, as though the buckle of a saddle belt could really be so interesting. He could feel her appraising him. He supposed she wasn't liable to argue that interrupting her was a crime, but it felt like she might, anyway.

"I'm surprised you know it," she said.

"I like the opera," Sylvain said, feeling hesitant about being baited into a conversation. He mulled it over. What had he seen Dorothea in that once, in one of her early performances after the war? "I don't remember the name. It's about that pregnant girl, right?"

"Gwenhwÿfar," the Captain said.

That jogged his memory. Gwen, the titular heroine, pregnant by her shallow lover, but loved desperately by her husband's brother. The brother, jealous and bitter beyond reason, slashes the girl's face, as her lover will not have her without her rosy cheeks. Ends in a wedding anyway. Sylvain recalled it pretty well, actually. It was an old one. The best tragedies came from Faerghus, didn't they?

"Ah," he said. "Well, I'll get out of your way."

"Where are you headed?" she asked.

Sylvain mulled that over, too. He could tell the Captain was getting cross waiting on his slow answers, but he didn't have one yet. He adjusted the strap of his satchel on his shoulder; it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and he looked at her. Just openly stared, though his mind was a long way away. He could blow her off pretty easily. Felix might get cross with him for starting trouble, but Ingrid might appreciate him standing up for himself. (Or maybe vice versa — depended on whoever picked a side first.)

He said, finally: "Tailtean. Just for a hack. Want to come?"

The Captain frowned.

"I know you're going to follow me anyway," he said, sensibly. "You don't trust me, you think I'm up to trouble — well, I'd rather you just come with me than watch me from fifty feet."

"I have no intention of spending my morning off following you around," she informed him.

Fair enough. He nodded and walked out of her sight for a moment, dipping into a supply closet and picking up a shovel. He brought it back and laid it over the very back of the saddle, and he tied it in place on each end so that it balanced nicely. He could feel her eyes on him but he offered no explanation, and she went back into her horse's stall. She said she didn't want to come, it wasn't going to be her business, then.

Horse's bridle was next, and Sylvain didn't bother with a bit; it wasn't going to be a hard ride, nor a dangerous one, and an old horse like her would be just fine having her head tugged side to side to get the point. She let out a long snort when he took too long fiddling at her chin, and he nudged her with his shoulder.

"Yeah yeah," he muttered. "This is life now, lady. We have to share the stable, even with people we don't like."

He gave her one last scratch before it was time to head out. He untied her from the cross-ties and led her out, and when he passed the stall that the Captain was working in, she didn't even look at him. He carried on.

It had been a while since Sylvain had left the city. Since his ride with Felix and Ingrid, actually, back when both of them had been at their wit's end with him. The world seemed a lot different, then, the ground frozen and the trees barren. He was almost surprised to see that it was spring out in the countryside, too, as though some small part of his brain thought the city was alone in the changing of the seasons. The whole world was blossoming. _His_ world was blossoming.

The road was much busier, too, and every few minutes he passed another cart headed into the city. The roads were wet and in need of patching, but Sylvain smiled every time he saw the cartwheels hit a rut, as all the greens piled high inside wobbled as one. One was just branches of maple blossoms, one of the season's earliest harvests, and the tiny green buds dropped here or there, leaving a dusting in their wake. It smelled divine. It _sounded_ divine — all the people on the road chatting, eager for a new week at market, the start of a new season after bunkering down for the winter. The realities of the hard work of summer were just ahead of them, but for now, spring could be enjoyed. Some girls in a cart full of sacks sang and played some clapping game with their hands. A boy ran down the road with his dog racing up ahead, and a young woman led a donkey laden with bags. Lots of people waved, and Sylvain waved back, a lonely person heading in the opposite direction.

He thought, watching them, that he ought to get back early. If he got stuck in traffic at the gates, he might never hear the end of it from his friends.

His ride took him out into the fields, and Horse was a little surer of foot there, and less skittish without carts all around them. There were still people out and about, of course, huntingand setting up to fish in the rivers, but they were few and far between. Sylvain gave them such a wide berth that they were like little figurines in the distance, simple blurs of colour meant to look like people. In that privacy he hummed to himself, and talked to Horse, and even sang a little, his voice growing louder the further he got from the road and the deeper he got into the old battlefields.

He passed the place where good friends had died, and where countless lives were shed, and he crossed the river at the old bridge. Just on its other side were a couple children, perhaps ten or maybe a little older, but certainly not old enough to go to war, even though they played at it. They fought with wooden training swords, batting each other back and making grandiose lunges and swings that would get them killed in a real fight. Sylvain chuckled, and they had been so caught up in their games that they hadn't noticed him draw so close — his presence made them drop what they were doing, as if embarrassed to be seen.

"Don't stop on my account," he called to them.

"Shut up, old man," one shouted back.

Sylvain burst out laughing.

"Yeesh!" he said, mock-offended, a hand over his heart. "What do I know of war, huh? Carry on!"

He carried on himself, laughing and listening to them jeer after him. He decided to press on south at least a little while longer, long enough to be away from any brats, and eventually he found himself in the shade of a big tree, one that was old and late to bloom. Its roots were big and snarled up out of the ground; perhaps it had nearly been knocked over in the war, but it hadn't quite fallen. Sylvain dismounted there and just let Horse's reins rest over her neck, confident that she would not wander far.

This place seemed nice enough.

He untied the shovel from Horse's saddle and carried it to where he thought he might be able to dig a decent depth. He didn't have to go deep, as he was sure no creature would come along digging for scraps, but he did not want it to surface in the rainy season. He pressed the tip of the shovel to the ground and used his boot to press it into the dirt, and it made a satisfying, wet sound as it slid down past that hardened top layer. He dropped the dirt aside in a neat little pile and went back for more, and he dug until he hit a root or something too hard to cut through. He speared the shovel into the ground when he was satisfied with his hole, and he straightened up for a moment, pressing his hands into his lower back to stretch. When he cast his eyes out around him, he felt very quietly contemplative, all alone in nature. Horse meandered around the other side of the tree, nibbling at the grass, and there were some noisy birds overhead, chattering as the breeze shook their homes.

He wasn't quite sure what he was going to tell Ingrid and Felix he got up to today, but it felt right that he went ahead with it. It wasn't that he really wanted to keep it from them — just that it felt like something he had to do on his own. If he had, they probably would have made some big song and dance about it, laying all of the worries on him, making it a bigger deal than it was, and they worried enough about him as it was.

He looked up at the sun. Getting near lunch time, maybe. He wiped the sweat from his brow and wandered after Horse, pulling his satchel from her saddle. He carried it back to his hole, where he sat down with the bag between his knees and opened it up.

Nestled in the crook of his water skein, sharing the space with a couple sticks of rhubarb and a little morsel of cheese wrapped in cloth, was the skull he'd come to bury, and his little wooden box. Sylvain pulled everything out, setting the skull down gently, as it was very brittle and he'd accidentally knocked off a stump of vertebrae earlier. He laid the box next to it and regarded them both for a moment, and then tucked into his water.

The birds carried on overhead, and the wing rustled the leaves, and Sylvain felt very calm. Very peaceful. He thought maybe it would get him emotional, being here, but it was actually nice. He unwrapped his cheese and ate it in little chunks, and he bit into his rhubarb, which was crisp and tart in a way that had him licking his lips. In Enbarr, he might have craved that kind of snack — it did not grow naturally in more southern areas, and it was amusing to see nobles spend inordinate sums on something he thought so little of.

"Hey Horse," he called, and she ignored him, but that was okay. "You think Edelgard will be real mad if we're not there to greet her?"

He chuckled to himself, stuck what he hadn't eaten back in his satchel, and he picked up the box and opened it. It was stuffed full of letters, crisp ivory in colour, as he had not let them see the light of day for a long time. Bits of wax seal crumbled around the bottom, weak and dried out, and they'd left oily spots of colour where they'd brushed up against the other pages. Sylvain rifled through them for a moment, and then he plucked out the stack. He held them between his hands for a moment, wondering if he should reread them, but he decided that it wouldn't change anything. There was no changing anything he had said or done in the past, or what was said and done to him. That part of his life was over.

He took a deep breath and set them in the hole.

The skull was next, and he picked it up carefully. It was just a skull, he decided. It meant something, of course, to bury it in the ground — to not lay the dead to rest was just as sick in Faerghus as it was anywhere else — but the person it had once belonged to was long dead. Sylvain mulled his name over: _Alphonse Lefebvre. _He'd never really gotten to know where Alphonse had lived, or else he might have buried the skull somewhere closer to home. Here would do, he thought. Alphonse had loved his homeland, even if he wanted so much better for it. Sylvain had never really talked to him enough about why.

He wish he had.

Maybe, if he'd cared more about getting to know Alphonse as a person, and less about his own loneliness, he might have felt inspired to make a stand for what he believed in sooner.

Sylvain let out a long breath, and he lowered the skull down, resting it upon the letters. He gave it one last look and a smile, and then he pushed a pile of dirt over it, and then another, and then another, until he could no longer see any of it. He used the shovel to cover the rest, and tamped it down at the top.

And then, in some small way, he felt ready to go home.

True to his worries, the traffic at the gates of the city was quite bad. He was fortunate that he did not have goods to inspect, as it allowed him to skip the bulk of the line, getting dirty looks from people eager to get to market the whole way up. With only a few people waiting ahead of him, he discovered that the delay was twofold: sheer volume of people, and the arrival of the Emperor's convoy.

They were already past the gates at that point, and being on horseback boosted him high enough to be able to see their banners. They were stopped just on the other side of the grate for reasons unknown, but the roadblock was surely driving people a little mad. Sylvain waited for his turn to pass. From what he could see, the convoy was quite small; he'd assumed Edelgard wouldn't stay long, but her retinue was quite small even for that. It didn't surprise him, particularly from a person as intensely private as Edelgard.

Her business here was, after all, a great deal more personal than a mere visit from a head of state.

The convoy still hadn't turned by time Sylvain was ready to enter, and the knight who approached him for inspection waved him through. He thought it might really be that easy, but the moment he saw a second knight look at him and then call to his partner, he knew he was about to be stopped.

"Captain de Gouges asked you be inspected upon your return," the knight informed him.

Sylvain sighed. Of course. He dismounted, glad that he no longer had a human skull in his satchel. The knights immediately set about pulling open his saddle bags and unfolding his blanket, just in case something was folded up within. His shovel was given a number of questioning looks, too, but what damned him was most likely the dirt on his knees and on his hands. The knight took one look at that and shook his head.

"She'll want to inspect you personally," the knight informed him.

"Will she be long?" Sylvain asked, impatience creeping into his voice. He glanced aside at the convoy, wondering if he could see anyone he recognized and could call in a favour with, but there was no one.

"She isn't far," the knight said.

The knight walked off, disappearing behind the convoy. Apparently he wasn't exaggerating; scarcely before Sylvain could protest, the knight was back almost immediately with the Captain behind him. He and the Captain met eyes and he smiled, opening his arms.

"Ready for inspection," he said.

The Captain gave him a look that could kill.

"Out getting into trouble again, Gautier?" she asked.

Sylvain looked at her. The serenity he'd felt this morning in bed with Felix, the humour of breakfast, the peace of sitting out in nature putting one more piece of his past to rest — it didn't quite dissipate, but standing with Captain de Gouges there, under her judging gaze, he realized something.

"You know, when I got back to Faerghus, Felix told me that you're a playwright," he said. "I probably would have asked you about that months ago if you didn't scare the shit out of me. I thought maybe we'd get along someday."

She laughed very suddenly. Sylvain didn't think he was being that funny, to warrant that kind of reaction, so he just smiled wanly.

"Save your breath, Gautier," she said. "Being coy doesn't work with me, because I know who you are."

"We never _actually_ met before that day," Sylvain said. "But you'd made up your mind."

"You came to Fhirdiad from that expensive academy and slept with three of the girls in my barrack in your first few months freed."

"Yeah?" he said, and a chuckle rolled off his teeth involuntarily, but he didn't want to look regretful in front of her.

"Yes. If there was a lady knight in a row, and she had a shapely waist and firm breasts, you could pick her out even in full armour. As if war wasn't enough to deal with — that drama, every single week."

"Sounds about right," he said.

"So you think you can win me over just by being charming, do you?" she asked. "Impress me that you aren't just some warlord's son, but a romantic one who cares for the arts, even though he made violence his calling? You've already gotten away with murder, and you think I'm ever going to like you?"

A mean little part of him thought to ask her if she was bitter that her waistline hadn't attracted him, or ask her if she'd be happier with him now if he'd seduced her, too. Or he could point out the hypocrisy of it, that she, too, was a woman who made some sort of violence her business, and that in peacetime she was still a knight rather than a full-time artist.

But what did he know? Maybe she still wrote. He hadn't asked. He hadn't made any effort himself, either then or now, and even if he had, he wasn't so sure it would be genuine. And even if she didn't write, he knew that wasn't some cleverShe didn't hate him because he didn't charm her. She hated him because he was something of a war criminal, and she had the sort of backbone that didn't allow bygones to be bygones. Why would she? He wasn't her friend. He was just some nobleman's son, raised with the expectation that he could get away with _murder_. That was something you didn't shed easy, not even in a year's time, or five years, or ten.

That was the work of a lifetime, earning what you'd been already given, and even if he did it, why did anyone owe him thanks for it?

"Well, Captain," he said, "you don't have to like me. I'm okay with that."

Maybe she didn't expect that answer. She just looked him up and down, at his dirty knees and his mucked up hands, and she shook her head. Over her shoulder, Sylvain caught sight of Hubert getting out of a carriage. The Captain followed his gaze and shook her head.

"Just go, Gautier," she said, finally, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.

And then the Captain walked past him, heading into the fray of inspections. Sylvain swallowed a breath he didn't know he was holding, but he felt, at least in that moment, that they'd reached some sort of understanding. She didn't like him, and he was fine with that.

For a moment he stood there, and then he caught Hubert looking at him, and he grinned. Of course. Of course, if anyone were to see him sloppy and exhausted, it would be Hubert von Vestra, a man who had practically crawled out of the womb finely dressed and precise in his mannerisms, and Sylvain had never felt it more than that moment.

Sylvain grinned and called: "Hey."

"Hello," Hubert said, and his gaze drifted down. "Making good use of the clothing I bought for you, I see."

Sylvain opened his arms dramatically.

"Appreciating every last thread," he assured Hubert, and he walked over. Hubert was not the hugging sort, but that didn't stop Sylvain from subjecting him to one. Hubert very stiffly patted his back once, and then once again. Sylvain leaned back to smile at him again. "Long trip? How are the girls?"

"The ladies are fine," Hubert replied, curtly. "Fatigued from the journey, of course. Could you go see that their quarters are ready?"

"Sure," Sylvain said.

Fine by him, he thought, as he fetched Horse from the side and ran off with her. Maybe he'd be able to change before Edelgard caught sight of him.

Ingrid had already heard of their arrival when Sylvain finally got back inside, and he was immediately sent upstairs to change. Sylvain went without any more attempts at being funny, even though she did seem calmer at that point; eating and bickering with Felix had no doubt soothed her nerves. He changed as quickly as he could, leaving his sullied trousers draped over the end of the bed and wiggling into a fresh pair. His shirt seemed fine, so he left it, and he slipped Edelgard's dagger in his belt before he rushed right back downstairs. By that point, the whole castle had been rallied, and the front hall was lined with knights in gleaming armour, ready to give their Emperor a good first impression.

Sylvain fell into step beside Felix, who was standing behind Ingrid and Linhardt with his hands on his hips. Sylvain got a muttered "you're fucking late" and he answered it with a quick peck on the cheek, which Felix pretended did not happen, but Sylvain saw the twitch at the corners of his mouth. They both turned their eyes to the door; it opened for Edelgard. She was flanked by Hubert on one side and Byleth on the other, and she was wrapped in a great big cloak despite the turning weather, and even pulled over one shoulder, her pale hair fell nearly to her waist. Her attention was immediately on Ingrid, and Ingrid fell into a knightly kneel at Edelgard's feet, kissing her knuckles. Edelgard sighed, but she smiled very tightly, and when Ingrid rose again, they embraced.

Over Ingrid's shoulder, Sylvain caught Edelgard's eye, and her tight smile did not change. Sylvain waited his turn, watching as Linhardt and Edelgard exchanged cordial greetings, and then as Felix gave a curt little bow of his head and got a nod in return.

And then it was his turn, and Edelgard regarded him, perhaps wondering what kind of greeting was appropriate to their current footing. Sylvain wasn't sure what he wanted from her, and maybe the sentiment was mutual, for she waited for him to decide. He ended up just bowing to her curtly, a polite smile on his face. She nodded at him, too. She surely noticed the dagger, as her lavender eyes flitted to it for just an instant, but she said nothing about it.

"Welcome to Fhirdiad," he said, and she nodded and moved on. Sylvain realized the Captain was there as well; he watched Edelgard greet her with a similar warmth. He swallowed his breath.

He did not have to think for long. Byleth stepped up to him and she fixed her enormous eyes on him and he took her in a hug without thinking. She let him, and he was pleased to find her in better health than he'd last seen her in, and her black mantle was much lovelier than a dressing gown.

"Was the trip good?" he asked her, and she nodded. He gave her one last squeeze and let her go. "I'm glad you came."

She nodded again, and she moved from him to Felix, who was trying very hard to hide how pleased he was to see her, too. Sylvain beamed at them all, and for a moment he watched the room. It gave him a very good feeling.

"I never miss court," Felix said, which Sylvain thought he really should have spoken quieter, but he smiled just the same.

"Come on," Sylvain said. "It's not court. We're amongst friends."

It was, however, at least a little bit like court. Edelgard and Hubert immediately turned the business of settling in into a whirlwind of tours and visits, and Ingrid and Linhardt marched them all around the castle, showing them this and that. Sylvain was not invited, and so he, Felix and Byleth went off on their own tour for a little bit. While Edelgard was shown boring matters of brickwork and amenities and the integrity of the roofs, Byleth got a rowdy retelling of childhood stories, the more embarrassing the better, with the facts disputed between the two men as quickly as they were told. It was easy to be like that with Byleth; though both fondly called her Professor still, she wasn't too far in age from them, so outside the bounds of the Academy and war, it was easy to rib her and treat her as one of their own. She spoke little, but she laughed with her eyes a lot, and she scolded them with little more than a glance when they got too cruel with each other. It was nice.

When dinnertime came, Sylvain was surprised to find Edelgard had no plans to attend. She was tired, Hubert said, after the long journey. Sylvain joked that she was getting old, as he'd seldom ever seen her tire in the entire time he'd known her, and Ingrid and Felix chuckled at his audacity. Hubert did not smile, but he did cut his dinner with a precision that Sylvain expected to be applied to someone's jugular.

Still, the dagger had waited some months, as had the mysterious laboratory downstairs. It could wait a little longer.

It was well into the evening before Edelgard was ready to come back downstairs again, a time in which most people in the castle were preparing to go to bed. Sylvain was ready to do so himself, or at least spend time with Felix for a while before sleeping, but Hubert knocked on his (their!) bedroom door shortly before they planned to turn in.

"She'll see you now," Hubert said, and Sylvain dutifully got up, put the dagger back in his belt, and followed him downstairs.

Hubert didn't say much to him. He seemed to be in a mood, and their friendship was never the sort that was even called a friendship, so Sylvain was not sure he was privy to why. Edelgard not wanting to spend time with them for dinner, maybe?

"I'm surprised you're here," Hubert said to him.

"Really?" Sylvain said. Well, not really. It wouldn't be the first time he'd taken off. Once he'd gotten into that habit, it had been very difficult to stop. "I've got to wrap things up with Edelgard."

"I see," Hubert replied, and that was that.

Hubert took Sylvain to a guest room. It was small, and in months previous no fewer than twenty people had used it as a sleeping quarters, but Ingrid had moved people around and had it temporarily refitted for guests. Sylvain had thought it would be easier to just clean Dimitri's or Rhea's old quarters and toss some big red banners around, but he supposed that would be gauche, considering their history.

"Lady Edelgard," Hubert said, as they arrived.

"Yes, Hubert?" Edelgard replied. She was sitting on a couch, looking at some papers. Sylvain boggled that she could travel across Fódlan and have accumulated paperwork within the first day of arriving, but she pored over it without looking at them.

"Sylvain is here," Hubert said.

Edelgard turned and nodded.

"Come in," she said.

Hubert waited for Sylvain to enter, and the moment he did, he pulled the door closed behind him with a snap. For a moment, Sylvain was paralyzed at the door, pondering what to say, how to break the impossible tension that had built over the past few hours.

They hadn't spoken beyond official correspondence for months. The last time he'd made to see her, he'd been denied it, and though they'd never officially had a dispute, it felt like they were in some long argument that had never nursed without being put to bed.

He didn't dislike her. He didn't feel angry with her. Hell, he'd rehearsed this whole spiel for her, a pitch for his future that he hoped she'd take interest in.

But suddenly, alone in a room with her, he didn't know what to say.

He settled on taking the dagger from his belt by its sheath and crossing the room to offer it to her.

"I believe this is yours," he said.

She took it and turned it over in her hands very carefully. She inspected it with pursed lips, and Sylvain waited for the moment where she might seem to recognize it, or show some sort of secret feeling, but nothing surfaced. She exhaled like it was the first breath she'd taken in years, her expression completely passive, and then she set it aside.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said. And then: "That's it?"

That drew the smallest of smiles to her face.

"Yes, Sylvain. That's it."

"Alright then," he breathed. Gautier fluttered at the front of his mind, but he wasn't sure if it was the time. "Should I go?"

"No," she said. She shifted down the couch a bit, just two little scoots. "Come. Sit."

He did, and they sat in silence a moment. Edelgard looked at him quite plainly, and he looked at her. He wasn't sure of what he wanted to say to her then because he'd thought the dagger would prompt some discussion, some outpouring of emotion, but it all felt choked up in him as much as it was in her.

_ Man up, _he told himself.

He took a deep breath.

"So…" he trailed. “A while ago, Felix reminded me of that debacle with the White Heron cup. I just wanted to apologize for that.”

There was a flicker of confusion on her face there.

“What about it?”

“You had to compete for me,” Sylvain said.

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” Edelgard replied, quite seriously. She remembered it, certainly, and she turned her face towards him. “I thought it might happen."

“Really?”

“You were nervous about it," she said, learning back into the couch. "You never struck me as someone who got nervous about being showy, but from the moment Dimitri was selected to represent the Blue Lions, I thought it was going to be a problem for you.”

Sylvain felt exposed. Raw, even.

“Yeah,” he admitted, carefully. “How’d you know?”

“Because I know what it looks like when people mask their true feelings with agreeableness,” Edelgard replied. She paused thoughtfully, and then added: “Though you are much better at the agreeable part than I am.”

"No argument there," he said.

They sat together in silence a moment longer. He took a good, long look at her. She looked miserable, and it was the first time he had ever seen her looking so miserable. He wondered how she could be so unhappy, having just been given back the thing that had apparently plagued her for long.

Hadn't he given her closure?

It struck him, quite painfully, that he really did want to be her friend. He'd been through quite a lot with her, in a very different way than he'd been through a whole lot with Dimitri. Wouldn't it be nice to be entrusted with her friendship? He felt like he was finally ready to give her his.

He wanted them both to be happy.

"I hate to admit this, but you do know me pretty well," he said, finally. "You had me pegged almost a full year before I even realized I _didn't_ know _you_. But sometimes… I don't know, Edelgard. I feel like I wouldn't let you down so much if you just fucking told me what _you_ wanted."

"Sylvain," she said, a little scolding.

"I think you want to talk to me right now," he said, and he reached across her lap and took up the dagger in his hand again. He held it up for her to see. "This? I thought this was closure for you. That's what you said, right?"

He shifted closer to her and she stiffened, leaning ever so slightly away. He could beg her, he thought. Months ago, he might have begged her, but now he felt resolved. Didn't he have a right to know?

"Please," he said, quiet but firm. "Tell me why I'm here. Tell me why _you're_ here."

She took the dagger from his hands. She looked at it, at the twisting handle, at the polished golden gleam, at the delicate cross-guard, and it seemed large in her hands, even as a grown woman. She turned it over, and then she gently laid it in her lap.

Her lavender eyes pierced his.

"Very well," she said.

**PEGASUS MOON, 1181**

“Oh, no.”

Edelgard had just stepped into the carriage, but she turned around quickly and stepped right back out. Her dear teacher looked over, surprised, and Edelgard called to the driver, asking him to wait. The professor gave her a questioning look.

“My apologies, my teacher. I’m afraid that in my haste, I forgot something important,” she said. “I must attend to it at once, and then we will go."

Night had already fallen, and curfew was soon to go into place. While Edelgard had no fear of being stopped by any of the faculty, she moved with haste as to not inconvenience her party any further. She could only hope that Dimitri would not be difficult to find, as any delay would mean an even later arrival in the Imperial capitol.

Time was of the essence.

Fortunately, she caught him as he departed his room on the second floor. He was locking up as she reached the top of the stairs, and she walked to him briskly, her heels loud on the oak board flooring. He smiled at her upon approach, and when she came to a halt before him, she wondered how much he’d grown in a single academic year. An inch? Perhaps more? It made her feel positively girlish by comparison.

“Edelgard,” he said, cordial as always. “I thought you were leaving.”

“I was about to step in the carriage and I realized I’d forgotten to speak with you,” she said. “Will you come with me, please?”

Her room was nearby, and she led him to it. The moment she unlocked it, he reached over her head to push it open for her, and she went to her desk straight away and produced a sheaf of papers. From it, she peeled three, and she handed them to him.

“My weekly report,” she said. “I have not written one for Annette, as her grades have been exemplary, and she’s had no conflicts. The other three have had a couple citations for their behaviour... the usual rowdiness, and a bit of insubordination on Felix’s part, but nothing unusual.”

Dimitri nodded, his eyes fixed on the page. He read with his free hand under his chin, worrying his lower lip absent-mindedly.

“Sylvain has said a number of troubling things to me recently that I wanted to discuss as well,” she said. “I think it was meant in jest, but it worries me just the same. I’ve written down my remarks. Overall, however... he continues to improve in class, though at a modest pace.”

Dimitri hummed. He seemed mildly bothered, suddenly, but he did not say why. Edelgard thought to ask but decided she didn’t have time to pry.

"And Ingrid? How is her plan working out?"

"She'll be taking her exam for falcon knight just before the end of the semester," Edelgard said. "It will be a close call, and she will have no room for error, but if she remains diligent she will pass."

Dimitri nodded, relieved.

"Felix and I have had a number of conversations about his conduct," Edelgard added, "but his class work has been exceptional, at least in the areas of his interests. Everything else…" She paused, and made a fluttering little hand gesture. "I'm sure it's nothing new."

"If it's nothing new, then I don't see the point of him transferring," Dimitri said. "And I am still certain that Ingrid could have made falcon knight in the Blue Lions, and Sylvain seems no better focused with you than he was with me."

Edelgard pursed her lips very briefly.

"It was neither your nor my decision, Dimitri," Edelgard replied, "but you _did_ give all three of them your blessing."

"You're right," he said, very tersely. She could tell he was trying to control himself. "You're right."

Edelgard thought of the Professor, sitting alone in the carriage, and their guard, waiting patiently for her to return for their departure. Dimitri knew they were waiting on her, and yet he lingered on the fringe of a conversation. He offered no argument, no reason for his hesitation. Edelgard let her gaze fall for the papers in his hands for a moment, and then back up to him.

“This couldn’t have waited until you returned?” he asked, finally.

“Perhaps it could have,” she said. “But I will be away for a number of days, and it was important to me that you keep an eye on them.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

She frowned.

"You _requested_ I keep you abreast of their well-being."

"Only because they don't talk to me anymore," Dimitri replied. "I should feel fortunate that you take good care of them when they won't trust me, but…"

"But?"

Both of them froze in conversation.

"I sense they much prefer your company to mine," he said.

There was a flicker of hurt in his voice, and Edelgard felt it reflected in herself. She knew, for her own part, that their interest in her was misplaced. She could call herself an excellent tutor and a dedicated house leader, but just the same, they would return to their dear childhood friend, and support him through the coming trials. She would have liked to comfort Dimitri with that, but even beyond the limits of her trust in him, she felt unsympathetic. _Imagine,_ she thought,_ having people who thought so highly of you even in the midst of a disagreement._ She had scarcely felt such charity.

“I don't think that's true,” she said, simply, smiling. “Would _your_ loyalty to Faerghus change merely because you decided to tour the sights beyond her borders?”

Dimitri chuckled, a touch uncomfortably.

"My apologies," he said. "I thought… never mind."

"It's alright. But if you don't mind, Dimitri, I really must be going now," she told him.

"Of course," he replied, startling and evidently concerned about intruding on her time. He went right to the door and held it open for her, beckoning her to pass through. She smiled and did so. "May I walk you to your carriage?"

Edelgard nodded. Dimitri followed her into the hall, and together they walked past all the girls' rooms, chatter floating out from within. The students were settling for the night, and Edelgard thought about how she would be sleeping in the carriage that night, if she could sleep at all. She imagined the Professor would sleep soundly — she could sleep anywhere without a care in the world — but Edelgard felt no small amount of anxiousness at the idea. She had her reasons, of course, but with everything coming in the month ahead, it seemed silly, even girlish, to be worried about something as trite as drooling in her sleep in front of someone she respected so much.

A sigh slipped from her. Dimitri made a little concerned sound.

"Is something troubling you?"

"Nothing serious," Edelgard said.

She glanced sidelong at him and found him watching her intently. She thought it must have been funny, the two of them, both bulging with secrets and things better left unsaid, dancing around these conversations that, no doubt, felt like very little was being said at all.

_("Absolutely excruciating," Sylvain remarked.)_

But here, Dimitri did not seem to take her at her word. He looked upon her thoughtfully, and then he turned his eyes ahead of them, as if it would embarrass him to confess such a thing to her face.

"You've been quiet, as of late," he said. "And you've left the monastery so many times on Empire business. Is your father unwell?"

"Yes," Edelgard said. "He isn't long for this world."

Dimitri nodded.

"I hope he recovers just the same," he said. "But… I will be crowned king after graduation. When you are Emperor, I promise you will be able to rely on me as your ally, and, I hope, as your friend."

Edelgard reached for his sleeve, and she had barely touched her fingers to it when they both stopped walking to look at each other. A part of her, small and yielding and crushed beneath the weight of her heart, heard the word _friend_ and wished to embrace him, but she was not a little girl anymore. She could only steel herself.

"It is my sincerest wish that we can one day lead Fódlan in peace," she told him. "But I do not think peace, in the short term, is realistic."

Dimitri frowned.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean," she said, very carefully. "That we are not the only people in this world, and peace is not determined by our allies, or by our friendships. It is often determined by those who would do harm to us."

"Of course," Dimitri said, tentatively. "When it comes to war, we will be united against our enemies."

"Of course," she said, because there was little else to be said.

Dimitri smiled suddenly.

"You're so cynical sometimes!" he scolded her. "I suppose we need a bit of that to keep us grounded, but what could stop us from maintaining peace? If we must go to war, it would only be to settle the crimes of the past."

Edelgard took his hand in hers.

"Do you promise me that, Dimitri?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, as if it were madness for anyone to suggest otherwise.

Edelgard knew that she could not tell him the truth. He could not possibly understand, and she felt that in her heart as surely as she felt her commitment to her cause. But wouldn't it be nice, to be understood? Wouldn't this moment mean something, to be looked back upon with honesty?

"Then we must make an oath," she said. He chuckled, amused by what must have seemed like a show to him. She took her dagger from her belt, and she presented it to him. "An oath of friendship, as the future leaders of our lands. As I promised you once, now you must promise me."

"Promise you what?" he asked, but he took the dagger.

"That when the time comes, when you are ready, return this to me," she said, seriously. "And then I will know that _you_ are prepared to cut a path to the future we both wish for."

"Then you should take it now," he said, offering it back to her. "Because I am."

"No," she said.

His smile flickered, and then softened again.

"Alright," he said, in a tone that made her feel like she was being made to feel pacified. He buckled the dagger onto his belt, nestled right in behind his silver sword. "I'll wait until I am king, then. I'm sorry, Edelgard. I didn't mean for this conversation to turn so serious — or make you think too much about the future, when you must be so concerned about your father in the present."

He hesitated, and she let him have it.

He added: "You'll always be like a sister to me, Edelgard."

"Thank you, Dimitri," she said.

Edelgard began to walk again, and he followed her, having fallen into a polite silence. They did not speak again until they reached her carriage, and Dimitri opened the door for her once more, and offered her his hand so she could step up into it. She accepted it without hesitating, and then she did hesitate when he took it to his lips and pressed a chaste kiss to her knuckles.

"Travel well," he told her. "And sleep well, too, El."

"Sleep well," she told him in turn, and she passed into the carriage. He closed the door behind her with a tight little snap, and Edelgard settled onto the plush bench. The carriage lurched forward almost immediately, cutting Dimitri from her view. As the horses settled into a swift pace, Edelgard imagined him waiting at the gates, watching them leave, his hand still gently waving his goodbyes.

The Professor was watching her, and Edelgard smiled.

"Thank you for waiting for me," she said. "We have a long road ahead of us."

In that moment, she allowed herself one last hope. At the end of that long road, after the war and the bloodshed and the carnage, maybe she would meet Dimitri again, on the steps of Garreg Mach, as they celebrated the birth of a new Fódlan.


	43. Chapter 43

Sylvain sank back into the couch. He exhaled and felt like he was deflating, leaving his body lighter than air. He pondered the impossibility of it all; the breaks in their bonds, the friendships they had lost, and the ones they could never reclaim. Some things had been lost to time. Some things had been lost to human error, to lapses in communication that had allowed some of them to fall, and some of them to fall even further.

Months ago, he might have felt despair, knowing it could have been avoided. In the past few years, he might heard something like that and given up. Why bother going on? It was some small living proof that he'd never _imagined_ his friendship with Dimitri — that it had been a real thing, and a thing he'd tried to save, and a thing Dimitri had _wanted_ to save, at least at one point. It would have confirmed to him what he suspected all along, which was that he'd failed.

But Edelgard sat next to him, a living, breathing person, and she cared for him, too. She was funny about it, and she could not say it in the simple words he desperately needed from the people who loved him. But it was enough, right then, to know that in the last moments before she departed for her coronation, she thought to stop and express herself to someone who wanted to know he was okay.

That very night, he'd taken Dimitri into the city to carouse, and even though it hadn't ended well, Dimitri had tried, hadn't he?

He'd _tried._

Sylvain let out a long breath, and he stood up. He felt like he needed to stand, lest he melt into that couch and never get up again.

"I haven't upset you, have I?" she asked.

“Not at all,” Sylvain said, earnestly. “In fact… I feel kind of happy. Is that strange?"

"Perhaps a little," she said.

"Are _you_ okay?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I've had a long time to process this," she said. She turned her gaze to the dagger, weighing it in her hands. "And it's true, of course, that I wanted closure. Perhaps having this will give me that. But that's a matter for me to sort out, and you mustn't worry about it."

“No, no, no. We can work on that together, you know,” Sylvain said. “I can help. Friends do that for each other.”

She nodded, very slowly, very cautiously, but her lips curved into the tiniest smile.

"Friends," she repeated.

"Friends, like we said in Enbarr," he repeated back to her. "But not friends like Dimitri and I were."

"Dimitri cared about your friendship a great deal," Edelgard said.

"I know," he replied. "But I’m not saying Dimitri _didn’t_ care about _me_, because he did, once… but Dimitri was always a very... well, he was a one-track kind of guy. Couldn’t really put himself in others’ boots."

He didn't know why he was telling her that, and she didn't seem to know either, but it felt right to. What was he saying? He racked his mind. _Shut up!_ Just say it:

"I don't want you to replace him — I never did. It just seems to me you've cared for me and what I _need_ a lot, maybe more than anyone else."

“What about Felix? Ingrid?”

“Of course they care for me,” Sylvain said. “Absolutely! And hell, I'm the luckiest man alive that they still do, after everything I've put them through. But they’re my equals, you know? I never was going to serve under them.”

Edelgard nodded.

“I don't know," Sylvain said. He felt a lump in his throat. "So… I just wanted to say thank you. For caring about me. For caring about everyone."

He watched her for a moment, and though she looked pleased, she also looked very tired, so much so that he itched to take care of her. To serve her somehow, to help however he could. The longer his gaze lingered, the more she seemed unsure of what to say, and eventually he just grinned. He offered his hands to her and she looked at them dubiously.

“I want a hug,” he said. “You look like you want a hug.”

“Sylvain,” she scolded him, but she reached out and took his hands. He pulled her to stand, delighted that someone so terrifying on the battlefield could be whisked up to her feet like a feather. "You're relentless."

He thought maybe she was humouring him, at first, but he saw the little lift of her shoulders, the way she dropped her arms away from the sides of her body. Sylvain opened his arms too, and he swept her up. She sighed, and Sylvain chuckled and decided to savour it: a hug from Edelgard, rarer than gold, or precious gemstones, or lasting peace. He felt her nose poke his chest; she was too short to get her chin on his shoulder, and his arms around her engulfed her entirely. He felt her draw a shallow breath under his arms, and one horn on her tiara dug into his collarbone, but he didn’t mind one bit. She was surprisingly little under all that fabric.

Neither said anything. When her arms slackened around him, he let go too, only to find her hand winding into his sleeve. A laugh slipped out of him.

“Can't get enough huh?”

His laugh died quickly when he saw her face. She was overwhelmed, and she seemed a little startled, too, a breath caught just off her lips. He dully remembered going toe to toe with her, fear curling in his gut as though he was up against a titan.

“Edelgard?” he said, alarmed. He had one hand on her back still and he felt her breath in again, deeper than before but no steadier.

“I'm fine,” she breathed, so low that he might have missed it, but he was sure that was what she’d said.

"No offence, but you're really not," he said. "Sit, sit."

He didn't wait for her permission, easing her down onto the couch again. For a moment neither of them said anything, Sylvain watching her struggle to hold onto something beyond him. She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, and then, upon opening them again, she regained some resolve.

"I'm fine," she repeated, more clearly. "I just need a moment."

“Do you want me to get someone?" he asked, even though he was sure he was going to be doing that regardless. He would have been surprised if Hubert was outside of shouting distance, as it was.

"No, Hubert will be back soon," Edelgard said, with just a single bob of her head.

Sylvain nodded and took his hands off her.

"Alright," he said. "I'll let you rest and we'll talk again tomorrow. Deep breaths, huh?"

"Yes," she said, and something in it veered a little amused. He understood._ Imagine that, _he thought, talking Edelgard of all people through an odd moment. She said, with that firmness returning to her voice: "Goodnight, Sylvain."

Sylvain wished her the same and let himself out. The moment he exited, he realized someone was standing right there, just out of his line of sight, and his heart jolted into his throat before he realized it was, of course, Hubert. He managed to loom despite leaning against the wall. Sylvain closed the door behind him, chuckling to himself, and he laid a hand over his heart.

"Fuck," he said. "I almost dropped dead there."

Hubert looked at him quite seriously, and Sylvain pulled himself together.

"Edelgard's a little under the weather," he remarked.

"I know," Hubert replied. He straightened up from the wall, and his gaze fell upon Sylvain with some unspoken question. Sylvain knew what it was. He didn't bring it up. But Hubert said:

"Perhaps you could do me a favour."

"Anything."

"Could you track down Byleth? I'd asked her to linger close but you know how she is," Hubert remarked.

"Always running around all over the place," Sylvain replied. "Sure thing."

"Thank you."

Sylvain realized he was still standing in front of the door, and he stepped aside so Hubert could rejoin with Edelgard. Sylvain caught one more glimpse of Edelgard around Hubert's shoulder. She was still on the couch, and she turned her head to Hubert as he entered and said something about it being a difficult evening. Hubert pulled the door closed behind him.

Something didn't sit right, but he headed off to find Byleth just the same.

The halls were largely empty when Sylvain slipped out into them, meandering towards wherever he thought people would be gathering — he thought it sickly funny that for all of his wandering around the castle, he'd bemoaned the number of people eyeing him in the halls, and now at the very moment where he needed to find someone in specific, he couldn't find a soul who'd seen her.

But one knight directed him to the dining hall, where Ingrid had been spotted recently, and he went thinking that she might know. When he arrived there himself he found her sitting with her girlfriend playing a board game. For a moment he appreciated that sight; Ingrid tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and laughing at something, Amélie expressing something with such enthusiasm that she leant forward just to say it. They went on back and forth, at one point reaching to touch their hands together across the table. He was loathe to interrupt, but Ingrid spotted him before he could creep off.

"Hey," she said, like a question.

"Hey," he said. "Do you know where Byleth is?"

Ingrid shook her head.

"Nope," she said. "Haven't seen her since earlier. Why?"

"Edelgard and Hubert are looking for her."

He could see the question on her face, but he could only shrug helplessly. He had no idea, but he supposed, after all this time, that if Edelgard wanted for something, he had best trust her on the whys.

"Should I help look for her?" Ingrid asked, and she looked to Amélie again with what looked like a rapidly approaching apology to her girlfriend.

"No, no, no," Sylvain said, quickly. "It's not urgent or anything –– I promise you've been a great host and no one is contemplating dissolving Faerghus because dinner was only mediocre."

Amélie laughed, but Ingrid did not. She scowled, and Sylvain laughed, too, reaching to smooth her hair at the back of her head. Ingrid turned her attentions back to the board game, a little hotly.

"I'll have you know everything is going very well on that front," Ingrid said.

"I'm sure it is," Sylvain smiled. He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and started walking off, calling over his shoulder: "But maybe more parades? I think she'd like a parade after all."

Ingrid ignored him, but he caught the corner of her mouth twisting up into a smile, and she and her girlfriend immediately fell back into conversation, nudging each other under the table.

Sylvain resumed his search, running a solid lap of the first floor and then taking the stairs to the next. He passed the occasional straggler who had not yet turned in for bed, all of them gathered in pairs or small groups to chat. The castle had come to life in an unusual way with Edelgard's arrival, like court had resumed after a long winter, and though he was sure no two people would share the exact same feeling about Faerghus' future, that all eyes looked ahead to a future instead of back at where they'd come from felt promising.

He found Byleth when he spotted her through a window. She was standing in the courtyard, stock still, staring up at the sky. He went to the balcony and she turned to him before he even called to her. She smiled.

“Professor,” Sylvain called down to her, a grin spreading on his face too before he thought to tell her quickly: "Edelgard and Hubert want you."

Byleth nodded, and Sylvain backtracked a little up the hall to get to the nearest staircase. Byleth was midway up it before he got down even a few, so he waited for her to join him. She moved quickly and quietly, and as she stepped by him, she reached and touched his forearm very lightly with her fingertips.

"I know," he laughed. "Why turn in so early when the sky is so lovely tonight? We could be stargazing instead of sleeping…"

She shook her head, still smiling.

"Maybe I'll convince Felix to come out with me," Sylvain said. "I'm not feeling very sleepy, anyway. I could stand to sit out there and watch the stars for a while."

Byleth shook her head once more.

"No? Well, you should make an evening of it as soon as you can. It's still early enough in the year that we could see the auroras, maybe, if we're lucky. I think Edelgard would like that."

They walked on, Byleth her usual self and Sylvain chattering away. She moved with distinct purpose, and Sylvain even found himself trailing a little bit behind.

"I guess there's more important stuff to think about," he conceded. "Hey, I was thinking…"

Byleth glanced at him.

"Do you miss having a crest?" Sylvain asked.

Byleth stopped, and so did Sylvain.

"Sorry," he said. "I know that's a little abrupt, but everything we found in the laboratory downstairs… Edelgard's trying to remove crests, right? Do you miss yours?"

For a moment, Byleth thought about it, a hand tucked under her chin. Sylvain let her ponder it, resisting the urge to chatter more. Finally, she shook her head. Sylvain smiled, a little relieved.

"I don't really think I need to lose mine," he admitted. "It wouldn't solve my problems. But you're probably the only person who's lost one right? Maybe you know something the rest of us don't."

Byleth nodded.

"Yeah? What is it?"

She slipped her hand into his.

"Let's ask her," she said, and her voice surprised him. He quite often forgot what she could sound like, especially away from the din of the battlefield, but he nodded, curling his fingers around hers.

"Alright," he said.

When they returned to the Adrestian trio's quarters, Byleth let them in without knocking. Sylvain almost thought to do it for her, disinterested in treading on anyone's privacy, but Byleth led him in with a briskness that didn't leave him time to act. Hubert looked up at once, even though he was midway through relieving himself of his jacket. He tossed it over the back of a chair. Edelgard was laid out in bed, asleep.

"Edelgard needs you," Hubert said to Byleth. And then: "Thank you, Sylvain. You may go."

Byleth marched up to Hubert. Sylvain watched them face off in complete silence, the rapid back-and-forth of two people who knew each other intimately enough to say a great deal without once saying a word.

Hubert sighed.

"Very well," he said.

"Do you recall that Byleth bore the Crest of Flames, once?" Hubert asked. 

The two of them sat on the couch, and at that, Hubert glanced across the room, to where Byleth leant over Edelgard's sleeping form. "When we struck down the Immaculate One, her body was freed of the Crest, and her hair and her eyes darkened once more, as she was before she was enlightened..."

"I remember," Sylvain said. Though he hadn't been there personally, he had stumbled through the aftermath, swept into arms and arms and arms, his poor brain shovelling images into his memories without taking time to process. "But now...?"

"It seems her body has some memory of it," Hubert said. "Like something in her, some remnant of the goddess reacts to being near Edelgard. And so..."

They watched as Byleth passed her hand over Edelgard's heart, and with her eyes closed, she took a deep breath in, channeling some unknown magic. Edelgard stirred, her eyes opening, and at once they focused on Byleth, who smiled so serenely that Sylvain almost felt inclined to avert his eyes, and he did. Hubert still watched, however, his gaze calm. Sylvain got the impression he had seen it many times before.

"What about the Crest of Flames?" Sylvain asked. "Isn't gone, isn't it?"

Hubert looked at him very suddenly. He frowned, and he did not want to believe what his mind offered as a possibility.

"You've seen her in battle," Hubert said, curtly. "She's even used it on you."

Sylvain _had_ seen the Crest of Flames before. Not just on Byleth -- on _Edelgard._ Flashing rich purple as she duelled Dimitri in the storm, a hidden power that allowed her to rise after his mighty blows. Sylvain exhaled, long and slow.

"Edelgard has the Crest of Flames?" he asked. "She has…?"

Hubert nodded. Sylvain just muttered some expletive under his breath.

Hubert watched his ladies for a moment again.

"She's been dying for quite some time now because of it," Hubert said. "The body can hardly sustain one crest, let alone two. If it weren't for Byleth siphoning that power…"

Hubert paused there and shook his head. Sylvain imagined all his petty fantasies about how he might be rid of his own crest, a thing that had certainly never killed him through its existence alone. Perhaps there was something to be said for the havoc it had wreaked on his life, but a crest alone hadn't caused that. People had.

He thought of the city of Enbarr, and all its miraculous changes, its tireless leader, and her endless pursuit of Fódlan's healing. Is that why Byleth had been ill, drained of her power in order to grant Edelgard the fuel to change the world? The mere idea was maddening to Sylvain, and yet he felt he understood it. It didn't seem so crazy to him, to let your life go in favour of something else.

Sylvain watched Byleth tend to Edelgard for a moment; there was a faint purple glow to her hands, and neither of them spoke. Not that quiet was new for Byleth, of course, but whatever she was doing, it needed concentration. He thought he understood something about it. What they were doing.

"She's not going to die, is she?" Sylvain asked, very quietly.

Hubert's patience, endlessly balanced on a precipice, seemed to be right on the edge of failing.

"No," he said, curtly. "At least not today."

"That's the least inspiring thing you could have said," Sylvain replied.

Hubert just shook his head again.

"So what's what the dungeon is," Sylvain said. "It has… whatever Linhardt needs to find the answer?"

Hubert nodded.

"That won't be your concern, at the very least," Hubert remarked. "You've done more than your part, helping to find that place. The dagger is no small comfort, as well; I daresay knowing what became of it will give her some strength in facing what comes next."

_It should be my concern, _Sylvain wanted to say. _We're friends, and friends care about each other._ But he kept it to himself, as it was enough to know that for himself. For a long moment, he and Hubert sat in silence, and Sylvain's gaze fell upon the dagger on the table. It sat there, the glow of candlelight illuminating the polished gold crossguard. Sylvain did not think. He leant forward, grasping it in his hand, and he gave it a long look before he affixed it to his belt.

"What are you doing?" Hubert asked.

"I'll bring this back to her tomorrow," Sylvain promised. "I need to do something with it."

If Hubert was inclined to ask, he didn't bother. Instead he just gave a helpless little gesture with his hand; Sylvain would do what Sylvain would do. Sylvain flashed him an appreciative smile, and then reached over and clapped a hand on Hubert's bony knee.

_"_Hey," Sylvain said. "Take care of your ladies tonight, and you and I will talk in the morning or something. If the offer to help me sort out everything with my daughter is still on the table, anyway."

It came out of his mouth easy, but it felt like speaking another language. Just the same, Sylvain felt a great weight lift off his shoulders just for having said it, and he and Hubert stood together for a moment. Sylvain felt compelled to look away, embarrassed for himself, but Hubert nodded.

"It is. Thank you."

Sylvain smiled a little easier, and he gave Edelgard and Byleth one last look. Both of them ignored him, too preoccupied with each other, some small, private conversation, and Hubert rose to join them. It was lovely, in some way.

Sylvain left. He had a partner to get back to, too.

Felix was the one dragging him out of bed that morning, itching for a few rounds in the training ring before breakfast, and Sylvain went happily. Despite the looming question of where exactly they would be in the coming months, it was nice to just fall into an old routine. Felix gave him no quarter and Sylvain didn't mind, as he'd spent the past few months restoring his skills to some level that reflected his training. Spending an hour darting around the courtyard and keeping Felix on the tips of his toes was satisfying, even if he never intended to use it beyond amusing Felix ever again.

He wasn't sure which was the more amusing part, though: giving Felix a run for his money, or giving Felix a run for his money and losing anyway.

"Fuuuuuuck," Sylvain groaned, clutching his jaw after Felix caught him with the pommel of his sword. He stumbled around, exaggerating it for the sake of it; it hurt, but nothing felt broken. Maybe he'd have a bruise at most. "Ruthless!"

"That should have been easy to avoid," Felix remarked. "But you were distracted."

"I'm always distracted," Sylvain reasoned. It was true: he'd been a little preoccupied with a certain someone's thighs, or at least the way they looked through those fitted trousers every time he dipped into a lunge.

Felix just sighed, long and exasperated but completely resigned. Gladly resigned, too. Just as well, considering there was a lifetime of that ahead of them. _Hopefully._

_ "_Come on," Felix said. "One more round."

Sylvain straightened up, and he flourished his lance around just for the sake of it, ending with it tucked under his arm.

"One more," he confirmed, knowing completely that it would turn into two, maybe three. He'd show up to his meetings with Hubert and Edelgard with a big grin and already purpling, and both of them would doubt his readiness, but that was alright.

He would know.

"Shame Edelgard is under the weather," Felix remarked. "I'd kill to spar with her again."

"I'm not enough of a challenge, huh?"

"You're not," Felix replied. He stepped into a lunge, and Sylvain side-stepped him. When he brought up his lance to tap Felix on the behind, Felix blocked him handily.

"Like it'd stop her," Sylvain remarked, narrowly blocking another blow in turn. Actually, he decided, conversation could wait –– otherwise Felix was going to make this much harder on him than necessary.

They traded blows back and forth for a while, and Sylvain pushed Felix back with the lance here or there, forcing him to concede ground to not get poked in the ribs. On the battlefield it would be over in moments –– _someone_ would swing for the neck or something –– but Felix let it go, at least long enough until he could close the distance again and get a foot on Sylvain's belly to shove. Instead of following through, he just leant his weight in like he might, and Sylvain had to drop his lance aside to brace Felix by the ankle.

"Thanks for not actually doing that," he joked as Felix backed off.

Felix whacked him in the hip with the flat side of his sword. Sylvain laughed and tackled him.

They were still grappling with each other when Ingrid whistled to them loudly. Both of them wheeled around to look at her, and Sylvain felt himself get bopped on the head even as he stopped what he was doing.

"What?" he called.

"Edelgard wants to see you before breakfast," Ingrid called, exasperated.

Her schedule always prevailed, didn't it? Sylvain glanced at Felix, who shrugged.

"Go deal with it," he said. "Ingrid, come spar. I'm not done here yet and you're getting soft."

Sylvain laughed kissed Felix swiftly on the cheek and let him go, heading off towards Ingrid. She shook her head slowly for a moment, but she joined Felix in the courtyard anyway, rolling up her sleeves as she walked. _Good, _Sylvain thought. They'd tire each other out, and he'd have a very peaceful afternoon.

"Where is she?" Sylvain asked.

"The lab," Ingrid replied, without even looking back at him. And then she punched Felix in the face, and neither of them were going to make for good conversation. He chuckled, heading off.

But the moment he was on his way, he felt the heaviness of the coming conversation settle on him, and he shouldered it well.

——

Sylvain descended the long stairs into the dungeon on his own, a torch in one hand and the other wound into a fist, just to brace himself. With the nice weather above, it had become much more damp in the dungeons, and they were due for another draining, at least until the laboratory was deemed no longer worth digging out. Cold droplets fell onto his head, into his hair, and the air had an almost earthy taste to it, like he was seconds from being buried in wet dirt.

It was so disgusting that by time he stepped through the warp floor to the laboratory, he was comparatively glad to be in the dry old place, even if the lights still bothered his eyes. He called out Edelgard's name and got nothing in return, so he walked for a little bit. It did not take him long to cover all the ground he'd covered before; Felix and Linhardt had mapped the laboratory quite extensively, but Sylvain had not paid any particular attention to it.

Edelgard was quite bold to set out down there as though she were taking a stroll through the city. When he called out again and she called back, it was nonchalant. Over here, in the depths of this place unlike any other! Come find me!

When he found her, she was in a small room. It looked like a child's wooden-block approximation of furniture in a dollhouse, a slab of metal for a bed, a slab of metal for a table, a piece of twisted metal for a chair. Not unlike a dormitory room at Garreg Mach, actually, albeit one built by a lunatic.

"What you up to?" Sylvain asked.

Edelgard did not reply for a moment, but then she turned and fixed him with a very serious look.

"Remembering," she replied. "I lived her for a while, some years ago. Before Garreg Mach. There used to be another warp tile, connecting this place with Enbarr, but when we began the war against Those Who Slither In The Dark, they destroyed it to cut me off. It was my hope that this one had survived."

Sylvain did not know what to make of that. He nodded, slow and careful.

"I imagine it doesn't make much sense to you," she replied. There was something a touch amused on her voice, and Sylvain chuckled under his breath.

"Sure doesn't," he said. "Linhardt explained it a little but it's all sort of beyond me. I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to catch up on that, though."

Edelgard nodded.

"Right to the point," she replied. "I appreciate that."

"I thought you might."

She moved for the door and he stepped back, out of her way. He followed her down another long, lonely hall. The blue lights caught in her pale hair and made it glow with colour, her dress cast in dark purple. She beckoned him to keep following her, and he did.

“It’s funny," he said. "You never, not even once, told me what it was like for you as a kid. But I knew there was something there. Not like this, exactly, but I thought we were kind of the same, somehow…”

She glanced back at him.

"We've all suffered," she remarked. "I think that's what brought us all together, in the end. Those of us who survived, at least."

She trailed her fingers across the wall for a moment, and then withdrew, carefully.

"A lot of people died," Sylvain said. "But you saved everyone you could."

Edelgard paused, and then nodded. Together they were silent, at least until Edelgard led them to a room with another great slab of a table. Above it was a massive version of the glass panel that Linhardt had been tooling with, and just like him, Edelgard gazed up at it as though it meant something.

Sylvain felt quite sure that he was meant to be amongst people. That his dreams never included places like this, that his desires for his life never extended to mysteries or conspiracies or shadow wars. At most, he had been raised to rule over some lands, and make life as good as he could for other people.

He was glad, though, for people like Edelgard, who would think beyond that. Someone had to. He admired that a great deal.

"You really planning to remove crests with this place?" Sylvain asked. "Remove yours?"

"If I can," Edelgard replied. "There are more like me out there, who would benefit from such a thing. There are others who suffer under the same condition I do. There's Hubert and Byleth –– they would have each other, of course, but we are happiest as a trinity."

Sylvain felt the corner of his mouth curl.

"And you have plenty of friends who want to see you grow old," Sylvain said.

Edelgard nodded.

"I know I can be hard on you," she replied. "But I am adamant that you care about yourself, Sylvain, because of experience."

"I know," he replied. He pursed his lips for a moment, mulling over a terrible question: "When I first got back to Enbarr, when Hubert blackmailed me there –– why did you even offer me Gautier then? Surely you knew I wasn’t ready, even with help.”

“I knew you wouldn’t take it. I just wanted to know where you stood.”

“You could have just asked. You could have just told me. I just…”

He trailed off. She looked ahead of her, into the nothingness of the room, and then she nodded.

"Do you want Gautier now?" she asked.

He felt his stomach twist, and then it unfurled like a butterfly sliding from its cocoon, unexpected and shaky:

"Yes," he said. "Though… I know I'm still not ready. I have a long way to go."

She nodded.

"Then you'll have it, when you're ready," she replied.

Sylvain felt a part of himself leap out of his skin and bound around the room. Though he remained glued to the spot otherwise, he had to calm himself, breathe, _prepare_ himself for that reality.

"I'd like you to come back to Adrestia for a year or two," Edelgard continued. "First I'd like you to stay with Ferdinand for a bit, under his study for rule, because he has a great deal more expertise in that subject than I do."

"Dorothea's going to love that," Sylvain remarked.

"You're going to learn a great deal from her, as well," Edelgard said. "And after that, you'll go to Brigid and see how Petra manages her people. She is young and still being tested, but we only stand to gain from learning different ways of doing things."

"Sure," Sylvain said.

"And then you can stay with me, provided I am still around."

"You will be," he said.

Edelgard smiled very tightly.

"I would want Hubert to oversee you for at least your first six months back in Gautier," she said. "I have every trust that if you endure your other schoolings, you will be prepared by then, but…"

"Gladly," Sylvain said. "Better make it a summer, though, he'd be miserable in the winter."

Edelgard closed her eyes and smiled.

"Yes," she agreed. "We'll do that, then."

Sylvain felt ready to burst. It was intimidating, certainly, to have all of that stretched out ahead of him, but a few years seemed like nothing. He'd spent years under his father and Miklan, and years under the Church and the Kingdom, and years in warfare, and years lost to his own brokenness. A few years amongst friends, for positive pursuits, seemed positively wonderful, no matter how daunting.

He wasn't certain that he could do it, but he was certain that he would try his damnedest.

But there was one last thing.

"Could I bring Felix, if he'll come?" he asked. "And… my child?"

"Of course," Edelgard said, and she said it very carefully. That carefulness made his stomach twist in a whole new direction, almost had him laughing just to diffuse the sudden tension. Sylvain's heart leapt into his throat when she added: "You have a child?"

_ Hubert, you bastard, you awful, secret-keeping asshole._

"Uh," Sylvain said. "Yeah. Wow. I thought Hubert told you everything."

Edelgard shook her head.

"I guess he's a good friend to me, too, then," Sylvain replied, and he hung his head for a moment, overwhelmed. “Wow. You realize I’m going to be insufferable, right? I’m going to have a meltdown once a week about not being ready for this.”

“I know," she said, a little more wry. "If you’ve got that much insight, just choose not to panic."

"Like it's that easy, huh?" he teased.

Perhaps she thought it was, but she didn't say so. She just shook her head again, smiling this time. Sylvain laughed, and he ran a hand down her back, fondly.

"You know, it never would have worked between us," he said, coyly, his other hand laid over his heart. "We're just two different people, Edelgard."

"Don't be silly," she scolded him, but it was toothless. She reached up and she patted his cheek, just once, with a maternalism Sylvain had not felt in a very, very long time, and it made his grin stick even harder.

"Let's get out of here and go get breakfast," Sylvain said. "After one last thing."

Edelgard fixed him with a curious look.

"After what?" she asked.

He reached for his belt and unhooked her dagger once more. He held it up to her and she looked at it as though she had not realized it was gone, and he took her hand and pressed it into her palm. Her fingers closed around the sheath but he held his hand overtop so she could not withdraw it.

"I _know_ you don't like oaths of fealty," he said. "But I'm a man of Faerghus, so I have to make you one. It's my duty."

She sighed, but she held his gaze firmly.

"It's an oath of friendship," he told her. "I'm giving you this dagger because I want you to know that I'm ready to cut a path to the future we both want."

For a moment she was silent, her chin dropping, her eyes closed. He could not tell if he had said the worst thing on the planet, or if he had managed to overwhelm her, Edelgard, the most indomitable woman he had never known. Perhaps the most indomitable human of them all.

But she raised her eyes to him again and nodded, firmly.

"Thank you, Sylvain," she said, and there was a note of earnestness in her voice that thrilled him. He clasped both his hands around hers for a moment longer, beaming at her, and then he let her go.

She held the dagger to her heart and smiled.

"Well," she said. "My dear friend. Let us go up to breakfast."

Sylvain nodded, and he offered her his arm. She let out a breath of a laugh, the scarcest one possible, and she took it. Despite his intentions, she led him out of the laboratory, to the world above, to Fhirdiad Castle. To a place he had called home and also called his hell, to a place where some of the most important people in his life had lived and loved him and been laid to rest.

And, as it were, where many of them still lived.

Their friends were waiting for them at the top of the stairs, Ingrid and Felix sporting fresh welts, Linhardt looking about ready to doze off, Hubert and Byleth standing side-by-side, and even Annette, beaming at them. Sylvain could imagine the rest of the Black Eagles there too, in spirit, all of them ready to embrace him.

"Well?" Felix asked. "What's our plan?"

Sylvain grinned.

"Want to get married?" he asked.

Felix went scarlet red.

"Shut up," he replied.

Sylvain laughed. So did everyone else.

"Breakfast first," he said. "Come on! I've got a lot to tell you."

The man who could rightfully call himself Sylvain Jose Gautier led his friends to the dining hall. In earlier years, he might have preferred to be alone, undeserving of such friendship or the best life he could make for himself, but every man had to grow up eventually.

He still had a long road ahead of him, but he was happy.


	44. Epilogue: Unified

"Margrave!"

The girl's cries rose shot above the people, right up into the lofted ceilings, where they hid amongst the wooden beams. Though dozens of heads turned to find both the caller and her quarry, the Margrave did not look back. He was engrossed in a conversation with two of his ministers –– minister being a strong word, perhaps, for an auroch rancher and a salt-miner, but it was important to maintain some sense of formality.

"Margrave!" she called again.

Though he heard her the second time, he had to finish what he was saying:

"Okay, but we're going to have to do something about that. If people aren't happy with their pay, then they're just going to leave," he was saying.

The girl reached his side, and she stopped a step or two too late, bumping into his side. The Margrave put an arm out to steady her, and she looked up at him with deep wells of exasperation. His ministers laughed.

"She's an enthusiastic one," the rancher remarked appraisingly. "Where did you find her?"

The Margrave grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"Like you were as a kid?" he remarked. "Would you believe she just showed up and wanted a job? This is Paige –– she grew up near the southern border, but a couple years ago her parents moved the family back up here, so I made her my assistant."

"A little young for that, isn't she?" the miner laughed.

The Margrave glanced at the girl, as if feeling momentarily self-conscious, given his past reputation. That was a persistent ghost to have, especially for decades, but he felt sure that it wasn't the case at all. He shook his head, smiling, and he laid a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"She's a good kid," he remarked. "About my daughter's age. Our deal is she works for me for a year, I'll pay her tuition, and then she comes back and puts it all to work here."

"Ah yes," the rancher said, and she gave a serious nod. "I plan to send my daughter to Garreg Mach next year, as well. My husband and I had some thought about waiting until she was a little older, but she's just so eager to go."

"I was too, when I was a kid," the Margrave chuckled. "Couldn't wait. Had my trunk packed weeks early, and I kept having to pull things out that I still needed the use at the time… drove my parents crazy."

"What child doesn't want a chance to see a little bit of the world?"

"My son didn't want to go at first, but when it came time for him to come home, he ran away to Deirdru instead…"

"Margrave," Paige said, plaintively. A little _warning_. The Margrave smiled down at her, and she said: "You're to ride home at once."

"Why?" he asked, and though he asked lightly, a concern nipped at him. "Is everything alright?"

She presented him with a note; it was barely the size of her palm, even unfolded, and it needed no more real estate than that, because in a very familiar and curt shorthand, it read: _Come home._

_ "_What?" the Margrave replied, now truly concerned.

"It arrived by courier just now."

The Margrave weighed his options. If it was truly that important, wouldn't it leave some detail to impress its direness upon him? But then again, his husband had never sent such a curt note before –– or even any note at all, particularly at this hour of the day. Court had only only just had lunch, and surely it must be particularly noteworthy––

"Ready my horse, then," the Margrave replied. "I'll wrap up some quick business and be ready to go by time you are."

"Yes, Margrave."

His assistant nodded and curtsied and moved to rush off. The Margrave stopped her, catching her with a pinch to her sleeve, and she threw him a questioning look.

"And for the last time, Paige," he said, as he had said a hundred times before: "_Sylvain _is fine."

Some years ago, when tasked with pointing Gautier towards its future, Sylvain had chosen to make some drastic changes. 

One of his better ones had been to move the seat of power from Gautier Manor to the centre of its largest city, Autoire, just half an hour's ride south. The people cared more for their governance, he believed, if they could see it working in their midst, and when they could walk in the doors at any point of the day and place their hand in it. True, it meant that court could be a chaotic place, and it was difficult to get a word in when everyone could speak for themselves at any time, but a little bit of chaos was a fair trade-off for community. Just ten years prior it had been the quietest city hall in all of Fódlan, the silence interrupted only by someone stormed in to tell him what a shitty man or traitor he was, but now it brought him joy to show up each morning and serve that noisy, opinionated crowd. They were his people, but more importantly, he was their Margrave.

A less popular choice was to turn the old Gautier Manor into a museum of sorts. Everything that remained within it had gone from heirloom to solemn reminder; Sylvain had been surprised to discover it largely untouched since the war, and less surprised that he'd had to liberate it from loyalists with some help from Enbarr and Fhirdiad both. Everyone had expected him to take up his father's chambers and hold court there, but he'd refused. He had gotten the museum idea from Ferdinand, who had done similar with his own manor some years ago to great success, but his own people held a lot of resentment for a long time. Even now, some fifteen years later, it was scarcely frequented, but Sylvain had confidence that even if his contemporaries went to their graves hating it, their children would come around, and so would their grandchildren. As nice as it might have been to cut away the past entirely, some monument to wickedness was necessary.

Someday, people would appreciate that.

Least popular was his choice to establish his own family house an hour west of Autoire. Some people still held that the Margrave should live in relative comfort befitting his station, but Sylvain preferred something much quieter, more personal. It was good to have his own home, a place where he could just be Sylvain and spend time with his family, and though it was hardly a sprawling manor, it was large enough that he could invite company comfortably whenever he pleased, and there was a second house on the property that housed a family that oversaw the land. Sometimes officials from his government knocked on his door and brought their business over his threshold, to which he joked that he'd have to make a second even smaller home even further out, but the need hadn't quite become dire yet.

Paige did not accompany him on his ride back home, though she did see him off at the gates, nagging him about all manners of things he would have to attend to as soon as family matters had been sorted. She liked to nag about as much as Sylvain liked to be nagged so the arrangement suited them, and thinking about House affairs took his mind off an otherwise persistent worry as he galloped down the country roads. If there was any time of year to have an emergency, this was certainly the best; the ride might have been miserable in the dead of winter, but on a balmy early-summer day, the breeze was nice and he could get by with his cloak tied to the back of his saddle.

His worries vanished as soon as he reached the edge of the property, crossing under the great wooden trellis marking the driveway. The driveway was lined with carriages, each in different colours and of different makes. Sylvain's mind boggled at the sight of them; surely his stable could not accommodate that many horses, and yet there was not a single horse to be seen, to say nothing of the amount of people his house could accommodate.

Why were so many…

Something clicked in his mind. His heart stopped momentarily, and restarted again when he finished the long ride and found himself looking at his house. It was starting to get dark, and so lanterns were lit in every window, and he could see the vague silhouettes of people moving around inside. On the first floor, in the lounge beside the entrance hall, there were two little girls pressed against the window glass, their pumpkin-orange hair illuminated by the lanterns. They watched him dismount, their mouths wide and eyes round, and they vanished behind the curtains. He thought he heard them shriek as they did so.

His daughter's nanny, a greying old woman, came out the front door. For a moment they looked at each other, apprising what the other knew, and then Sylvain grinned.

"I'm onto you," he told her.

"Let me take your horse, and you get right inside," she said.

"Not a chance," he said. "Go back in with the rest of 'em. I'll be in in a minute."

She shook her head at him with a smile, but she went back inside. Sylvain moved the reins up over his horse's head and led her around the side of the house and up the small lane to the stable. The horse trotted behind him, ears pricked forward; sure enough, the stable was packed with horses, some of the smaller ones doubled up in a wider stall, and his own horse's stall was the only one unoccupied. He made quick work of stabling her, stripping her of her tack and topping up her hay. He supposed he should have just let the nanny take care of this, but he wanted that quiet moment to collect himself, to prepare himself, even if he didn't truly need it.

Some things were just hard habits to kick. He had spent all of his dark years racing at a door to get enough momentum to break through it, only to find his friends all standing on the other side waiting to open it for him. He was certain they were there now, and it wouldn't do to keep everyone waiting.

He went back to the house. He hesitated with the door handle, listening –– there was quiet chatter inside, audible only because there was so much of it, and someone hissed for the others to shut up. He turned the handle slowly, listening to everyone fall silent, and then he pushed it open a crack to peek through at the crowd of people.

His husband impatiently yanked it open the rest of the way.

A great shout rose up:

"Happy birthday!"

Sylvain laughed, and Felix fished him out of the doorway with a firm hand on his bicep. Ingrid was on his other side and she linked with his other arm, and the two marched him right into his own foyer, into the cacophony of people calling his name and cheering and singing. He blinked in the bright lights — someone had lit a truly prohibitively expensive number of candles — and found his heart bursting. The whole room was lined with friends and their families, even stretching up the stairs, some on the landing just upstairs.

Sylvain called back a merry "Thank you!" to some applause.

And then he was passed around for hugs and kisses, which was simultaneously overwhelming and the greatest thing one could have in life.

"All of you seriously came all this way?" he called out, laughing. Dorothea and Ferdinand's youngest hugged him around his knees very suddenly, and he nearly buckled.

"Violet, be careful," Dorothea scolded her, and she peeled the child off before embracing Sylvain herself, placing a hard kiss on each cheek. "Look at you, you get more handsome every year."

"Don't say that, it'll go to his head," Felix remarked.

"It is much too late for a warning like that," Ferdinand said, and when he embraced Sylvain next, the brim of his big fancy hat caught on Sylvain's head and was nearly knocked off. Sylvain steadied it with a hand, chuckling.

"Agreed," he replied, and as he pulled back, he raked his fingers through his beard and appraised Ferdinand's face. "Maybe you should grow a beard, Dorothea seems to like it."

Ferdinand shook his head, still smiling.

"Never," Dorothea declared. "I forbid it."

"Deny it all you want, you like it," Sylvain replied, and Dorothea pinched his cheek hard. He thought to tease back, but Petra was waiting patiently to the side, and he had all night to catch up.

"Happy birthday," Petra told him as he swept her right off her feet. Her beaded regalia so laden with bits of polished stone that she jingled as he did so.

“Babe,” he said, an old cheekiness bubbling up in him, as light as air.

“Babe? You have not changed even a little bit, Sylvain,” she protested, but she was still smiling when he set her back down. It was odd to see her so swathed in layers, but then again, he supposed that Gautier's summers were still a fair bit cooler than Brigid's winters. Far less humid, at least.

"He really hasn't," Caspar interjected. "Other than getting broader."

"Hey," Sylvain chuckled.

"Don't be mean, it's his birthday," Bernadetta protested, and when Petra stepped back, she pressed herself under one of his arms for a hug around his middle. Sylvain grinned into her hair.

"It's alright, everyone is mean to me all the time, every day," Sylvain joked. "It's a regional sport. In fact, if you want to do right by your kids, you should've raised them to do the same."

Some laughter went around, and some of the children groaned; many of them could not imagine confessing to much affection for their Uncle Sylvain, but all of them knew from experience that he was the most enjoyable to be around around the holidays, and the most likely to invade the kids' table with dirty jokes and colourful stories. He knew he was adored by them, even if many of them were in the thick of adolescence and therefore too cool to acknowledge it.

Even so, he loved their children, about as much as he loved his own child, and he had spent many weeks over the course of their lives visiting them, seeing how they did things on their own lands, connecting with them. His own childhood had been a long and lonely affair, remembered mostly for the highlight of visiting friends, and he was glad to give his daughter the best of that: years in Adrestia and in Brigid, a six month stint with Claude and Hilda in Almyra, a couple months in the rose gardens out in Nuvelle. There were friendships everywhere in Fódlan, if one cared enough to maintain them, and he was confident that his daughter had many, many more friends than he did.

Thinking of his daughter:

"Where's our baby girl?" he asked Felix, who sighed.

"Upstairs," he remarked. "I told her to come down but she's completely buried in getting your present done."

"Enough to miss this?" Sylvain remarked, but he wasn't surprised at all.

He'd give her more time. He buried himself again with his friends, his loved ones –– chattering, teasing, getting chided. Drinks were served, wine brought from all corners of the world, and Annette had produced a truly outlandish amount of pastries and sweets to stuff them full even before dinner.

But he couldn't abide his daughter missing dinner, so even though Felix made to go pry her from her room, Sylvain offered to go himself. Felix never fought him on this, even when he should have spent his birthday thoroughly devoid of responsibility, because Sylvain loved his daughter wildly. He'd loved her since the moment he'd met her, possessed by the thought that they were so much the same that no one could look at her and deny she was his daughter. Meeting her had come with the stark realization that they were going to know each other for the rest of their lives, and he was glad that she was still so little when it happened, as an older child might have made him feel too self-conscious of being so overwhelmed.

He'd let himself fall into it hard. He'd never understood religious adulation, or the look on Dorothea and Ferdinand's faces as they gazed down as their first baby, but there he was, blindsided by his affection for her.

Sylvain considered then, a hand hovering at her door, that he was one of the most fortunate people to ever live. He knocked and basked in that thought while he waited for her to answer. It occurred to him, too, that she'd come back to Gautier for a lone week, missing weeks of school overall, solely for the purpose of being around for his birthday.

He never would have done that for his father. Not when Garreg Mach had meant so much to him.

The door opened a crack. She peered through at him and groaned.

"Daddy," she protested. "I'm not done!"

"Take your time on it," he said. "Come down to dinner for now."

He imagined he had interrupted her in the middle of a particularly good creative flow; she had a bit of paint streaked across her cheek, and he would have thumbed it away if he didn't figure she thought herself too old for that kind of doting. Her certainly thought he was, at her age.

"In a minute," she promised.

"Can I see it?" he asked.

"No," she said, and then, just as quick: "Actually, yes. Then if you hate it, I can still fix it."

"I'm not going to hate it," he promised her. She stepped back and let him in. Sure enough, she had been hard at work on the painting; it was considerably sized, and glossy-wet where the paint hadn't set yet. She had a thumb hooked into a palette still, and she marched back over to her painting to appraise it.

It was of their family. He and Felix, shoulder-to-shoulder, and her seated in front of him. A truly painstaking amount of time had been put into rendering his nose, and Felix's dispassionate gaze was so lifelike that a smile tugged on Sylvain's mouth. Their daughter's likeness was mostly unfinished still, plagued by Sylvain's most difficult gift to her: they shared a particular gloomy introspection, one that had taken him years to wrangle. He couldn't have imagined committing his image to paint in his youth, and he'd never tried. He was certain she'd manage it.

"Yvonne," he said, fondly, and she gave him a look. Having been raised by Felix as much as raised by him, that look said _shut up,_ but he didn't: "It's beautiful."

"It's not right," she replied. "I want it to be perfect."

"I love it," he insisted, and he put an arm around her. She rolled her eyes and leaned into his side, and then put down the palette and hugged him. "I'm so glad you came back to visit for my birthday."

"Me too," she said, muffled against his chest.

He ruffled her hair, and he felt happy, even if she was still stuck in the throes of self-loathing. He wanted to tell her that it didn't matter — he loved it no matter what, and he would love it even if he was misshapen, he would love it even if he was no more than a stick figure — but he knew. He understood it.

"Dad?"

"Mmhm?"

"Happy birthday," she said.

Dinner was lovely. Cake was even better, sweet with honey and fruits brought by guests, but not quite as sweet as company with his favourite people, people who teased him and puffed him up and spelled out his name in blueberries under a much larger and more intimidating "45". Sylvain ploughed his way through eating it knowing it would have him lethargic the next morning and laughed with his mouth full, but it was worth it for the people. He got to see all manners of rare sights, things normally reserved for only the biggest celebrations and festivals: Hubert and Edelgard a little bit tipsy and chatty for it, Lorenz with wine spilled down his front from spluttering through a well-placed joke, Claude passing around some delightful tin of something-or-other that made people funny. There were children who screamed without a care for propriety or indoor-voices, ignoring their parents scolding them, the younger ones careening around the house on imaginary horses, the older ones poking their heads into adult conversations to hear a little gossip. He could not go longer than two minutes without someone pulling him into some conversation: _how are you? I hear the mines are doing well. Are you and Felix hoping to get away for a little vacation soon? You deserve it. You should come stay with us. Bring Yvonne. We'll invite everyone. We'll save you a seat. We heard such nice things about––_

_Yes_, he thought, warmly, these were this people, and they knew him and understood something about him, and he was looking forward to spending the rest of his life knowing them and understanding them, too.

The evening ended just before midnight, with just enough time for many to head back into Autoire to their accommodations. Like a good former-Strike Force, they banded together to tack up horses and get carriages on the road, passing the littler children from arm to arm to sleep the journey away, quietly joking with each other about their next get-together. Most people would stay for a week to squeeze more time together out of the journey, but it was likely that they would not all be together again like this for a few more years, when the timing was right again. They were, after all, very busy people, and spread across all of Fódlan.

But eventually, it was just him and Felix and their daughter standing at the end of the drive, waving off the last of them. Yvonne ran off back into the house to get back to her painting, freed of the trappings of social obligations, and for a moment Felix and Sylvain lingered there in the cool summer air.

"Thanks for all that," Sylvain said. "I know you don't love throwing parties."

Felix smiled a little wryly.

"It was fine," he said. "I had a good time. Did you?"

"Of course," Sylvain grinned.

Neither said anything for a moment, watching the carriages trundle away down the road, the voices inside drifting away with distance, swallowed up by the dark and the trees.

"Want to go to bed, or are you going to stay up for a while longer?" Felix asked, already turning to head back.

"You go in," Sylvain replied, and he nudged Felix in the direction of the house. "I'm gonna see them to the end of the road."

"Alright," Felix said, and he gave Sylvain a meaningful look before heading off. Sylvain let his fingers trail from Felix's back as he went, and then he turned his eyes back to the road.

The last of the line of carriages was some minutes away from vanishing completely, just a couple swaying lanterns hanging off the back. He watched them until they left, smiling to himself, and despite how warm it was, he felt a sudden chill. Not a bad one, not a worrying one, just a small piece of wonder at the current position of his life and the world around it, both what was new and what had come back to him. The carriages were going. They would be back.

He had never dreamt of this moment. He could not imagine another life for himself.

He went inside and off to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You did it! You made it to the end, as did I!
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you, a million times over, thank you for everyone who stopped by here to read, comment, tweet at me, kudos, bookmark, anything. It means the world to me, and I'm so delighted to have been able to share this with you, and share in your kind words and interest.
> 
> I'll be back with more fic projects after a break -- with what exactly, I'm not 100% sure yet, but whatever it is, I'm looking forward to having you back again, too!


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